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Hanks Family

Nancy Hanks Tributes

Excerpts from newspapers and other

sources

From the files of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection

~l l . uso-l . o%S OSS 3?

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

EVENTFUL EPISODES IN LINCOLN'S REMARKABLE CAREER.

His lowly Birth and First Great Sorrow. Entertaining Incidents of Hi* Child- hood— His Courtship ami Marriage— The Lawyer and the President.

History never furnished the record ot any life that more fully exemplifies, thad does that of Abraham Lincoln, the truth of Burns' oft repeated couplet:

The rank is bur the {.aiinea's stamp, The mail's the gowd for a' that.

In a forlorn log cabin, oua tlesolatespot uow know as •'Rock Spring Farm," in Hardin county, Ky., Abraham Lincoln was born Feb. 12, 1809, just seventy-nine years ago. He was not only born, but nurtured in penury, and the coarse food and scanty clothing that barely served the necessities ot existence were earned, after the age of infancy was passed, by the labor of his own hands The stories of his privations are lull of pathos, hut these lead up to a lofty and unique career, the hke of which will in all probability never be repeated. His father's name was Thomas Lincoln, and Nancy Hanks was his mother's maiden name. At the time of his birth Lincoln's parents had been married about three years, one child— a daughter — having been previously boru to them.

The mother was a slender, symmetrical woman of medium stature, a brunette, with dark hair, regular features and soft, sparkling hazel eyes. Her face accorded with her life both being sad. At the early age of 23, when her son Abraham was born, hard labor, hard usage and tho Lack of sympathy between herself and husband, had brought to her face the mel- ancholy expression which afterward dis- tinguished the countenance of her son. Compared with the mental capacities of her husband, Nancy Lincoln's accom- plishments were of a high order, for she could both read and write, and her home, humble though it was, indicated a degree of taste and refinement exceptional in tho wild settlement in which she lived. Her's was a strong, self-reliant spirit, which commanded the respect as well as love of the rude people with whom she associ- ated.

Little Abe was only about 9 years old when his mother died, but her iniluence over him had been such during the few years of their companionship that it lasted always. She had found time, despite her trials and struggles, not only to teach him to read and write, but to impress upon his young mind that love of truth and justice for which he was ever noted Her death seriously affected him, being in fact his fust great sorrow. It occurred Oct. 5, 1818; she left two children, Abra- ham and Sarah, the youngest child, l nomas, having previously died. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was buried in an openin" in the timber, a short distance from the

Lincoln home, in Spencer county, Ind., to which place the family had moved in 1816. The spot selected was tho summit of a wooded knoll, beneath a wide spreading tree. This grave is now inclosed with a high iron fence, and at its head stands a white marble stone on which Is inscribed the following:

"Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died Oct. 5, 1818, aged 35 years. Erected in 1879 by a friend of her martyred son."

In the absence of a clergyman to per- form the usual religious rites, the burial service was brief, consisting of the sincere prayers offered by sympathizing friends. But simple as was the ceremony, it was

solemn withal, fo. nowhere does death seem so impressive as in such a solitude.

It is not often accorded to a child to have two tender, loving mothers; but this was the boy Abe's good fortune. Thirteen months after his own mother died, a step- mother, who w;is as kind as she was sensi- ble, was introduced into the Lincoln household. She was a Mrs. Sally John- son, a widow with three children, but her heart was a capacious one, as Abe and his sister .Sarah soon discovered. The second Mrs. Lincoln soon exhibited a special fondness for little Abraham, whose pre- cocious talents aiKFenduring qualities she was quick to apprehend. He was en- couraged by her to study day by day and night by night. She was building better than she knew, and our country today owes a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Lincoln's womanly perception of her stepson's capacity and her unselfish efforts to afford bim every opportunity her narrow means permitted. Notwithstanding her gener- ous assistance, his advantages were, how- ever, extremely limited. All his school days added together, says as trustworthy authority as Lamon, would not make a single year in the aggregate.

Abe at an early age became a proficient speller, and enjoyed using his knowledge not only to secure honors for himself, but to assist his less fortunate schoolmates; and it is told that he was exceedingly in- genious in the selection of expedients for conveying prohibited hints. The follow- ing anecdote illustrates his kindness and readiness of invention: A Miss Roby, supposed to have been quite pretty— for wo are assured Abe was half in love with her— was aiso extremely diffident and withal not a proficient scholar. She had spelled defied with a "y," and was threat- ened and frighten*! by the impatient teacher. Abe, seated at a rude desk in one corner of the room, with a significant look placed one of his long fingers to his eye, thereby enabling her to chango the letter in time to escape tho infliction of the rod, held in the firm grasp of the irate master. Youn^ Lincoln's attire at this period of his life is described as consisting of buckskin breeches, much too short to meet, the low, coarse shoes he wore, and a linsey woolsey shirt. His cap was made of the skin of a coon.

Books were scarce in the settlements in which Abe lived as a lad. Numbered with the few volumes he succeeded in ob- taining were the Bible, "Pilgrim's Prog- ress," the poems of Burns and "Weem's Life of Washington." These he read over and over again, until their contents be-

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The grave of Abraham Lincoln's mother is on a wooded knoll about half a mile southeast of the site of her Indiana home. Near her are buried Thomas and Betsey Sparrow, who followed the Lincolns to Indiana, and who died a few days before Mrs. Lincoln and of the same disease ; and also Levi Hall and his wife, who died sev- eral years later. There are two or three other graves in the vicinity. Until 1879 the only mark about the grave of Nancy Lincoln was the names of visitors to the spot cut in the bark of the trees which shaded it ; then Mr. P. E. Studebaker of South Bend, Indiana, erected the stone, and soon after a fence was purchased by a few of the leading citizens of Rockport, Indiana. The inscription on the stone runs : " Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Mother of President Lincoln, died October 5, a.d. 1818. Aged thirty-five years. Erected by a friend of her martyred son."

Gives Memorial to Lincoln's Mother

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Nov. 19.— A gift of $25,000 toward construc- tion of a Memorial at the grave of Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, -at Lincoln City, Ind., has been made by Frank C. Bell, Muncie manufacturer, accord- ing to announcement of the Indiana Lincoln union.

The Methodist Festival.

To the Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser: —

Allow me to correct a single error in the excellent speech of Governor Bullock at the festival in the Music Hall last evening The minister who preached 'the funeral sermon of Mrs. Lincoln, (mother of the late President,) was not a Methodist but a Baptist. See Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln, pages 24 and 29.

If any person supposes that some of the speakers at the late convention were disposed to boast a little over the achievements of the Methodist church in times past, I am sure no one of them would desire to claim an honor that did not belong to them. The mistake on the part of the Governor was very excusa- ble, but it would not be excusable on the part of the

ethodists to let it pass unnoticed.

A Methodist.

Boston, June 8, 1866.

y

AN OBSCURE ORIGIN,

Beyond the lact that he was born on the 12th flay of February, 1809, In Hardin County, ICy., Lincoln had little to say of his origin, Mr. Herndon asserts. There seemed to be something about the matter which he preferred not to dwell upon, and when he spoke ot the early history of his family at all. It was with evident reluctance and sig- nificant reserve. "It can all be condensed Into a single sentence." he onco observed, ••and that sentence you will find In Gray's Elegy— 'The shore and simple annals ot the poor.' That's my life, and that's all anyone can make out of It." The only time he ever 6poke to Mr. Herndon upon the subject was In 1850, wt>en they were driving to the court In Menard County, 111., to try a case Involv- ing the question of hereditary traits. "Dur- ing the ride," says the biographer, "he re- ferred for the first time In my hearing to his mother. Hesi.ld, among, other things, that She was the Illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter; and he argued that rrom this last source came all the qualities that distin- guished him from the other members of the Hanks family." To this he added ruefully: "God bless my mother ; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

NANCY HANKS.

The mother of the President, Nancy Hanks, was taken at an early age from her mother, Lucy, afterwards married to Henry Sparrow— and sent to live with an uncle and aunt. At the time of her marriage to Thomas Lincoln, the President's father, she was In her 23d year, above the ordinary height, slenderly built, and her face ♦/ore a marked expression of melancholy, though In disposition she was amiable and generally phasrful. Hor — p^»iQn« - lyn e sorely tried by her husband, who was of a roviii* aua

less nature, fond of the chase and not averse to the bottle. He could neither read nor write when they were marrlea, and she taught him to write his name and spell his way slowly through the Bible. Their first child wa6 a daughter, Sarah; the next Abra- ham, and the next and last Thomas, who lived only a few days. The family removed to Indiana when Abraham was 7 years old, and there the mother diea of the milk sick- ness, in 1818. "Be good to one another," were her last words to her children.

SARAH BUSH.

Thomas Lincoln did not long remain a wid- ower. Within a year he returned to Ken- tucky and fixed his admiration— for a second tlme.lt was understood— upon Sarah Bush, the widow of Daniel Johnston, who had been Jailer of the county. His courtship was short and practical, "Miss Johnston." eald he, "I have no wife and you no hus- band. 1 came a-purpose to marry you. I've fcnowed you from a gal and you've knowed hie fron»a boy. I've no time to lose, and If you're wlllln', let It be done straight off." Bhe replied that she had some debts to pay before she could marry him, whereupon he paid them, and the wedding took place the uoxt morning. The new Mrs. Lincoln was accompanied to Indiana by her three chil- dren—John, Sarah and Matilda— and she kook with her quite a stock of household goods. Her advent was a great blessing to the Lincoln children. She was industrious and thrifty, but gentle and affectionate. Of young Abe she was specially fond , and it was flue to her that he was allowed to go to School. But he had to stop so often In order to work on the farm that all his school days lidded together did not aggregate a year, i •1 Induced my husband to permit Abe to | read and study at home as wen as at ichool," said the stepmother. She believed that he had more than ordinary ability to tarn, and was anxious to give him all the idvantages she could.

GETTING AN EDUCATION.

The Indiana schools of that time were poor

Eurserles of greatness. They aimed only to each "the three R's," and that in a very Restricted way. The books used were the "American Speller," "Webster's Spelling koolc," "Pike's Arithmetic" and "Murray's English Keader." -'Lincoln once told me," fays the author, "that the latter was the best school book ever put Into the hands or tin American youth." The only books of a keneral nature that the locality possessed were the Bible, ".assop's Fables," "Kobln- |on Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," I'Weems' Life of Washington" and a "His- tory of the United States," all of which roung Abe greedily devoured. (It may not »@ out of place to say here that the writer of jhesa lines once heard Lincoln pronounce [•The Pilgrim's Progress" the best piece of writing In the Kngilsh language.) He was klso a patient reader of a weekly paper from Louisville, which one of the neighbors kindly tarnished him, and a stray copy of the Stat- ues of Indiana afforded him much pleasure. Ee absorbed information of every kind that same In his way, and the charge was freely kade that he was lazy, and wasted his time p reading when he ought to have been earn- IK a living.

■

I G H T

Lincoln's Memorable Praise of His Mother a Tribute to Womanhood

"A

LL that I am and all that I hope to be I owe to my angel mother." This was the tribute paid by Abraham Lincoln in after days to the woman who had so well loved and trained him in the nine years they were permitted to share — for in 1818 Mrs. Lincoln died, leav- ing1 her husband, Thomas, with their two living children, Abraham and Sarah, in the primitive cabin hidden deep in the forest lands of southern Indiana. I : ;

Those first nine years were pre- cious, not only to Lincoln but to all American manhood. "As the twig is bent," one well knows, the tree will growT and for her tender tending of that one sapling in the then sparce forest of our countrymen we owe to Lincoln's, mother an Incalculable debt OS gratitude. Her son has towered, strong and straight, an example to, those who study his life, and, as the great "melting pot" seethes with strange dreams of many lands, it is well to have such an ideal of clean, Unselfish manhood to study.

In the-childhood of Abraham Lin- coln was laid the foundation of his future career as a statesman.

Lincoln's mother was a great woman. She gave her gifted son an impetus toward the intellectual life and1 cultivated in his mind high ideals and aims.

Lincoln was born in a rude log cabin near the present town of Hodgeville, Ky. And there, in the fringe of trees bordering Rock Creek, he used to play. This epot is now marked by a fine memorial building, erected in 1909, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Kentucky's most llliutrious son.

'ihe father, Thomas Lincoln, was a good man — a farmer of limited means. He was the son of Abraham Lincoln, a pioneer settler in Kentucky. It was there in 1806 that Thomas married. Nancy Hanks, whose ancestors hailed from old Virginia. ' She is described as a woman of pleasing appearance, be- ing tall, and having dark hair and sparkling hazel eyes. She was a cheerful and religious woman

.Their children, Sarah and Abraham (the younger brother having died in infancy) were quite without educa- tional or religious privileges such as people enjoyed in more populous com- munities, so the mother began their education. Like George "Washington's mother, she read the Bible to her chil- dren Sunday afternoons and told them scriptural stories.

Abraham took after his mother. Ho was eager for books, so she had little difficulty training him to read and .to write. Busy woman that she was, she snatched an hour whenever possible for his instruction. She listened to him read a chapter from the Bible and made him study Dilworth's speller.

When Lincoln was 7 years old the family moved to the wilderness of southern Indiana, becoming squatters on Government land. The mother knew what was before her, and she was willing to face dangers of a life in the forest. "Hope and hard work"

two years on earth. A real noble wom- an this pioneer mother of Abraham Lincoln.

2. -l2.<Lig<}to

was the motto of this pioneer woman tf'hey had made the seven day journey on horseback. Abraham, handling an bx with skill, assisted in clearing SBTound for the eighteen foot square cabin, which, alas, was not finished before snow came. His bedroom wa$ 'between the slab ceiling and the roof, iftnd it was reached by a ladder. Crude' home made beds, tables, stools and benches formed their furniture. Witji his father's rifle Abraham shot his first wild turkey, and thereafter helped supply the table with game, which his mother broiled over flaming embere while she baked corn bread in the ashes.

Thus passed Nancy Lincoln's last '

In the first place he was born of a good woman. Nancy Hanks, his mother, neglected in the neglect of those of her social status at the time she was born, must have in the sub- limity of maternity engendered in spring the nourishment that made the great achievements of Abraham Lincoln possible. Yet, to her is due but the honor of instilling, with her own blood, her own spirit, the char- acter that enabled Abraham Lincoln to become the first American— the conglomerate of all that is meant in the phrase, "the land of the free and the home of the brave." /5 of

The family moved from Kentucky to Indiana when Lincoln was 7 years old. Two years later Nancy Hanks Lincoln succumbed to a pestilence known as milk sickness. She died in October. Her husband sawed a coffin out of the forest trees and buried her in a little clearing. Sev- eral months later a wandering frontier clergyman preached a ser- mon over her lonely grave. No wonder the countenance of the great emancipator moved all who beheld it by its deep melancholy. He knew what sorrow was forty-five years before he paced his office in the White house all night, with white face and bowed head, sorrow- ing over the defeat of Chancellors- ville, wondering whether he was to be the last president of the United States, and praying for the victory that came at Gettysburg.

All that year the sensitive bos grieved for the mother who had gone out of his life; but in time the father went back to Kentucky, and in Elizabethtown, near the big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in Hardin county, where Lincoln was born, he married the widow of the town jailer. Presently thereafter a four- horse wagon creaked up to the door of the Lincoln cabin in the Indiana forest, and young "Abe" made his first acquaintance with Sarah Bush Lincoln, who, next to his own mother, was to become the second incentive of his youthful life.

s3 WE I Ghl

THE

PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE

OF

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

Vol. XXIV. 1900. No. 2.

THE MOTHER OF LINCOLN.

BY HOWARD M. JENKINS.

From time to time the superiority of record evidence over tradition, and of documentary proof over gossip and legend, is strikingly presented. "We have now an interest- ing instance in the case of Abraham Lincoln's parentage. There has been extant, ever since the career of Lincoln and every detail connected with him became the subject of sympathetic interest on the part of his countrymen, a suppo- sition that his mother was not of legitimate birth. This, indeed, has not been treated as a supposition : it has been circumstantially and positively asserted in some of the most authoritative biographies. In W. H. Herndon's " Life" of Lincoln he relates the story of illegitimacy as coming from Lincoln himself in an isolated and notable conversa- tion, and J. T. Morse has cited this with full assurance in his " Life," in the " American Statesmen" series. Other biographers allude to and recognize the tale, and it has no doubt been generally received and credited.

Now, it is plain that there is no truth whatever in this story. Nancy Hanks was not the daughter of " Lucy" vol. xxiv.— 9 (129)

130 The Mother of Lincoln.

Hanks, as Herndon so positively says ; in fact, it is not clear that there ever was snch a person as Lucy Hanks. Nor was Nancy the daughter of any unmarried woman. On the contrary, her family record is unimpeachable, her birth is without a cloud, the evil story concerning her is appar- ently a pure invention — not a pure invention, either, but an impure, a base slander, derived from some vulgar and scandalous source. If Lincoln ever told such a story to Herndon — which may be confidently disbelieved — he was mistaken, and must have been misled by some evil whisper that had been unhappily brought to his ears.1

The little book, " Nancy Hanks," by Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, published in 1899 (New York : Doubleday & McClure Co.), is the source of the knowledge which sets right this story of illegitimacy. It distinctly and conclusively shows who the mother of Lin- coln was. It identifies both her parents. It proves them reputable people. It places her in the list of their children, with full title to respect.

There is other matter in Mrs. Hitchcock's book, some of which is entitled to our consideration also, but this in rela- tion to the parentage of Abraham Lincoln's mother is by far the most important. Mrs. Hitchcock has found (at Bards- town, Kentucky, the introduction to her book states) a document, heretofore unprinted, which is conclusive as to this point. She gives complete, both in type and in photo- graphic fac-simile, the will of Joseph Hanks. He was of Nelson County, Kentucky. His will is dated January 9, 1793, and was duly probated in that county, May 14, of the same year. In his will Joseph Hanks names his eight children. There were five sons, Thomas, Joshua, "William, Charles, and Joseph, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Polly, and Nancy. The will provides for them all, and remembers equally the three girls. It thus records the father's impar- tial gifts :

1 The genesis of the idea of illegitimate birth was made easier by im- perfect knowledge of the relationships of Nancy Hanks's family.

The Mother of Lincoln.

131

"Item. — I give and bequeath unto my daughter Elizabeth one heifer yearling called Gentle. Item. — I give and bequeath unto my daughter Polly one heifer yearling called Lady. Item. — I give and bequeath unto my daughter Nancy one heifer yearling called Peidy."

"We have here in Kelson County, Kentucky, in the year 1793, Nancy Hanks, daughter of Joseph. That she was the same who thirteen years later, June 12, 1806, was married by the Rev. Jesse Head, the Methodist preacher, to Thomas Lincoln, is not open to qiiestion. She is fully identified by abundant proof.

Joseph Hanks had been in Kentucky, prior to his death, only about four years. He had come, it is said, from Amelia County, Virginia. Following now Mrs. Hitchcock's general account, his wife was Nancy (she is called " Nanny" in the will), and she was the daughter of Robert Shipley.1 The wife of Robert Shipley, Mrs. Hitchcock says, was named Sarah Rachael. They were in Lunenburg County, Virginia, in 1765, where Robert Shipley bought land, three hundred and fourteen acres, September 16, of that year. Lunenburg County is near to Amelia County,2 in which Joseph Hanks is said to have lived before his removal to Kentucky.

The Shipleys had five daughters. These and their mar- riages, as given by Mrs. Hitchcock, were :

1. Mary. She married Abraham Lincoln, of Rocking- ham County, Virginia (son of John Lincoln, who had come from Berks County, Pennsylvania). She was thus the mother of Thomas Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln removed to Kentucky with his family, and was killed there by Indians, 1784.

2. Lucy. She married Richard Berry. They removed to Kentucky, probably in 1789, with Joseph Hanks and

1 This is the statement also of Mr. Samuel Shackford, in his paper on Lincoln's ancestry, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, April, 1887. He describes Eobert Shipley, however, as of North Carolina.

2 Mrs. Hitchcock says ' ' the next county. " It is not now so, Notto- way County lying between.

132

The Mother of Lincoln.

others. Lucy Berry, after the death of her sister Nancy, the wife of Joseph Hanks, which occurred soon after the death of Joseph, " brought up" her niece, Nancy Hanks. Richard Berry was the bondsman for Thomas Lincoln in his marriage to Nancy Hanks. The marriage took place at Rich- ard Berry's house, at Beechland, near Springfield, in Wash- ington County, Kentucky. It is this Lucy — Berry — who has been called in several of the biographies of Lincoln " Lucy Hanks," it being supposed, through the mists of dim recollection, that Nancy Hanks was actually her daugh- ter by blood, and not merely by adoption.

3. Sarah. She married Robert Mitchell ; they removed to Kentucky.

4. Elizabeth. She married Thomas Sparrow. This family also went to Kentucky, and in the accounts of those who remembered the Lincolns and the Hankses there are many allusions to the Sparrows.

5. Nancy. She married Joseph Hanks, referred to above. His will identifies her. " I give and bequeath to my wife Nanny all and singular my whole estate during her life, afterward to be equally divided between all my children .... I constitute, ordain, and appoint my wife Nanny and my son William as executrix and executor to this my last will and testament."

DESCENT OF NANCY HANKS. Robert Shipley = Sarah Rachael

Mary Lucy Sarah Elizabeth Nancy

to. in. ra. m. m.

Abraham Lincoln Richard Berry Robert Mitchell Thos. Sparrow Joseph Hanks

Thomas Joshua

William, m, Elizabeth Hall Charles

Joseph, m. Polly Young Elizabeth, m. Levi Hall

1 Polly, m. Jesse Friend

Thomas Lincoln = Nancy

Abraham Lincoln

The Mother of Lincoln.

133

It will be observed that Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were first cousins — he the son of Mary Shipley, and she the daughter of Nancy Shipley. I am not aware that this fact has heretofore been distinctly brought out.

Mrs. Hitchcock's book not only gives in fac-simile the will of Joseph Hanks, but also, in fac-simile, three docu- ments which relate to the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, and which fix the time and the place, as well as the fact, beyond cavil. These are (1) the marriage bond given by Thomas Lincoln and Richard Berry, June 10,

1806, two days before the marriage; (2) the marriage cer- tificate of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, signed by Rev. Jesse Head; (3) the "return list" of marriages sent in to the court clerk by Rev. Jesse Head, dated April 22,

1807, and containing with fifteen others the marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, on the date already given.

The second of these documents, as numbered above, is new, so far as I am aware. The marriage bond and the " return list" were both printed in fac-simile in Nicolay and Hay's "Life" of Lincoln, but not the certificate. Mrs. Hitchcock does not state where or when it was brought to light ; she mentions that " gradually the documents [re- lating to the marriage] were unearthed, owing largely to the efforts of Mrs. Vauter [? Vawter] and Mr. Thompson, of Louisville, Kentucky." The certificate is, of course, cumu- lative testimony ; the return list, taken with the bond, was already conclusive on the fact of the marriage.

The relationship of Nancy Hanks to Joseph Hanks, the carpenter, of Elizabethtown, with whom Thomas Lincoln " learned his trade," is made clear by the list of children in the will of the Joseph Hanks of 1793. The Joseph of 1806 was evidently his son, the youngest of the five in the will. He was the brother of Nancy, and, like her, first cousin to Thomas Lincoln.1

1 Nicolay and Hay say (Vol. I., p. 23), "he [Thomas Lincoln] mar- ried Nancy Hanks, a niece of his employer." They add that "Mrs.

134

The Mother of Lincoln.

Mrs. Hitchcock gives a page or two to a defence of the character of Thomas Lincoln. Probably this will be unavail- ing, but it is no doubt just. The figure of Thomas Lincoln, as presented in most of the biographies of his son, is a caricature. In the earlier ones he appears as a good- humored, indolent, and incapable person, but later ones, enlarging and dilating upon this, represent him as coarse, uncouth, and altogether worthless. Out of this there grew a vulgar and scandalous idea that Thomas Lincoln could not have been the father of so great a son.1

A very moderate application of common sense to the sub- ject will show that the ordinary notion adverse to Thomas Lincoln is unreasonable. The known facts concerning him show him to have been a man of his class, a hardy and energetic pioneer, meeting resolutely the trials and difficul- ties that faced him, and contending with them with fair success. Let us consider briefly some of these. (1) He learned a trade, that of a carpenter. (2) He took up a

Lincoln's mother was named Lucy Hanks ; her sisters were Betty, Polly, and Nancy, who married Thomas Sparrow, Jesse Friend, and Levi Hall." There is no little confusion in these statements, but it may be readily corrected by a reference to the diagram given above with the text. The foster mother of Nancy Hanks was Lucy (Shipley) Berry, her aunt. Betty Sparrow was her aunt as stated ; Polly Friend was her sister ; Nancy, sister of Lucy Berry, was her own mother, not the wife of Levi Hall, but of Joseph Hanks ; Levi Hall's wife was the Elizabeth of the younger generation, Nancy's sister.

The confusion in Nicolay and Hay at this point is presented also in Herndon, who pretended to have such a competent knowledge. He says in a foot-note, "Dennis and John Hanks have always insisted that Lincoln's mother was not a Hanks but a Sparrow. Both of them wrote to me that such was the fact. Their object in insisting on this is appar- ent when it is shown that Nancy Hanks was the daughter of Lucy Hanks, who afterwards married Henry Sparrow. It will be observed [however] that Mr. Lincoln claimed that his mother was a Hanks. ' '

1 This myth, not much admitted into print, exists orally and in manu- script. A lady prominent in literature, and otherwise well known, earnestly cautioned the writer of this, some years ago, not to investigate the parentage of Lincoln. Yet, as we see, investigation was jjrecisely the thing needed.

The Mother of Lincoln.

135

quarter section of land (on ISTohn's Creek), which it is testi- fied was " a fair representative section of the land in the immediate region." Coffin, who saw it in 1890, says it was then under cultivation, and yielding an average crop. (3) His second purchase of land (Knob's Creek) had " many acres that are very fertile." 1 (4) He resolved to move to a State with free labor. (5) He sold out his Kentucky land without loss. (6) Though his boat was overset in the river, he recovered his property. (7) He sought out good land in Indiana. (8) He travelled seventy miles to Vincennes to enter his new claim. (9) Through the winter he hewed the timber for his new cabin.

As to his acuteness and his perception of character, cer- tainly the selections he made when seeking both his first and second wives stand to his credit. Both Nancy Hanks and Sally Bush are described by 'all as women of exceptional qualities. There were, it may be added, a Bible and other books in the Indiana cabin, and Thomas apparently wrote his own name, without a " mark," to the marriage bond of 1806.

The temptation to " heighten the effect," to paint with vivid colors, in popular biographies, is very strong, and it results in most unjustified and misleading — often very unfair — work. In the case of Thomas Lincoln I have not a par- ticle of doubt that the received picture of him is thoroughly wrong.

Mrs. Hitchcock announces that a full genealogy of the Hanks family is in preparation. In her present volume she sketches what she believes to be the ancestry of Joseph Hanks, the father of Lincoln's mother, and in this I am obliged to confess a particular interest. It was suggested in my book relating to the township of Gwynedd, Pennsylva- nia, that it might very probably be that ISTancy Hanks was descended from a family of Hanke, or Hank, in the region

1 C. C. Coffin, — who adds : "It would seem that his selections of land cannot with justice be cited as evidence of inefficiency or want of judg- ment. ' '

136

The Mother of Lincoln.

near Philadelphia, one of whom, John, died in Whitemarsh, 1730-31, another of whom was in Berks County, in the neighborhood of the Lincolns, about 1754, and one of whom, perhaps Joseph, is said to have gone to Virginia with John Lincoln, grandfather of the President. This theory was supported by a number of facts, and seemed to me very reasonable. I had hoped that in time the finding of further documentary evidence might establish its correctness. Mean- while, Mcolay and Hay have recognized its probability in their work, and Coffin has adopted it more completely than anything I had said on the subject would quite justify.

Mrs. Hitchcock has, however, an entirely different line of descent. She does not come back to Pennsylvania at all ; she has a Massachusetts immigrant ancestor for the Ken- tuck}7 Hankses. Here is the line she offers :

I. Benjamin Hanks, from England (probably Malmes- bury, in Wilts), who, with others, landed in Plymouth, Mas- sachusetts, 1699, and settled in Pembroke, Plymouth County. "Among the parish records of Rev. Daniel Lewis," Mrs. Hitchcock has found the list of his children, eleven by a first wife and one by a second. The third one was —

II. "William, born in Pembroke, Plymouth County, Feb- ruary 11, 1704. Of him, beyond his birth, there is no fur- ther record. Mrs. Hitchcock accepts family tradition that he went on a sailing-vessel to Virginia, and settled " near the mouth of the Rappahannock River, where his sons, Abraham, Richard, James, John, and Joseph, were born."

HI. Joseph. Mrs. Hitchcock says all of William's chil- dren, named above, " with the exception of John, moved to Amelia County, Virginia, where they bought large planta- tions near each other," and adds that " Joseph must have moved to Amelia County, with the rest, about 1740." She proceeds then to identify him as the same Joseph Hanks who was in Kelson County, Kentucky, in 1793, and who made his will and died there that year.

We must see more of the evidence which Mrs. Hitchcock may be presumed to have, and which we suppose she will

/

The Mother of Lincoln. 137

print in her larger book, before a definite judgment can be passed on this Massachusetts derivation of Lincoln's mother. But we may fairly examine a moment what is now offered.

There is record evidence, it seems, that a Joseph Hanks was in Amelia County, Virginia, much earlier than the time of the removal to Kentucky. A person of that name sold land there in 1747, and bought other land in 1754. The records of these transactions Mrs. Hitchcock found in Richmond. The sale in 1747 was 284 acres « on the lower side of Seller Creek," to Abraham Hanks, presumed to be Joseph's brother. The purchase in 1754 was a Crown grant of 246 acres "on the upper side of Sweathouse Creek," adjoining land of Abraham Hanks and others.

There are some weak places, certainly, in this chain. The " family traditions" concerning William need support. His migration from Plymouth to tidewater Virginia, and his location "near the mouth of the Rappahannock River," seem vague and uncertain. But, accepting them as correct, was William's son, Joseph, the same person as he whose will showed him to be Nancy Hanks's father ? It is a long gap in time — and a long distance as well — between an authenticated date in Massachusetts in 1704 and another in I "1 L 1 Kentucky in 1793.

One thing seems tolerably plain. The Joseph Hanks who sold land in Amelia County in 1747 cannot have been the son of William, born in 1704. There is not enough time. Forty-three years is not sufficient for William to grow up, , . marry, and have a fifth child of competent age for making

title to land. If we suppose William to marry at the early age of twenty, in 1724, and suppose his fifth child to be born * \ in f X yearS ~ most unlikely,— that would make Joseph's

birth in 1730, and in 1747 he would legally only be an "infant," seventeen years old. Certainly, unless some of (j> ^ Mrs. Hitchcock's dates, or other of her data, are wrong, it is

very difficult to suppose that the Joseph Hanks of 1747 is the son of William Hanks, born in 1704. And, if this be conceded, the question follows, Was the Joseph of 1754

138

The Mother of Lincoln.

William's son ? The two Josephs Avho sold and bought land in the one county, 1747 and 1754, were probably the the same person, so if one was not William's son the other was not.

If, however, these difficulties are disposed of, the question next arises, Can the Joseph Hanks of 1754 be the same whose daughter, Nancy, was born in 1784 ? In such a case thirty years is a good while. Mrs. Hitchcock says that it was on the tract bought in 1754 " he [Joseph] then settled, and all his children were born." If he acquired it for a home, being then married, or about to marry, it is unlikely, though possible, that even his youngest child would be born thirty years after — of one wife. Again, Robert Shipley is stated to have bought his land in Lunenburg County in 1765 — eleven years after Joseph Hanks's purchase of 1754 in Amelia County. Are we to infer that Joseph did not many Mary Shipley until her father bought this land ? Joseph would be in 1765, if of age in 1754, a bachelor of at least thirty-one years — quite a contrast to the early mar- riage of his father which we are obliged to assume in order to make Joseph of age in 1754.

I have no desire to argue any question with Mrs. Hitch- cock, nor to throw discredit on her work, in which all who care for the Lincoln family-tree are interested. The con- tribution she makes concerning Joseph Hanks of 1793 is — as has been said — highly important. It is to be hoped that her full account of the Hanks family in America will make all the now obscure points perfectty plain. I cannot entirely give up, as yet, the idea of the connection of the Hanke people in Pennsylvania with the Lincolns. That appears to rest on a good foundation at some points, if it should prove to be unfounded as to the vital one — the parentage of Nancy Hanks.

HONORED

The Queen of the Turf.

f the reunion of the family oB ••Souvenir of the ™UB hose mother was

5S?E-«=SffS annlversary c

Asr m^ri.- foider appeared

%«c7hw*» tb.lMt.rt trottmfi

Nancy Hanks, Named After j Lincoln's Mother,

Tendered Unusual Reception at the Madden Farm.

Unique Souvenirs of the Occasion Con- tained Words of Wisdom From Martyred President's Let- ters and Speeches.

BPEC1AL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRES.

Lexington. Ky.. February 12.-On this the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, while President Roose- velt, Governor WiUson and thousands of other loyal Americans were participating in the ceremonies incident to the laying of the corner stone of the Memorial Hall on the Lincoln farm, near Hodgenville, and tributes were being paid to the memory and achievements of the martyred emancipator in nearly every city and town in this coun- try there was a particularly unique and appropriate observance at Hamburg Place. Wane" Hanks (2:04;. an ex-queen of the trotting turf and a great mother of trotters, who was named for the mother of Abra- ham Lincoln, was the hostess of an equine reception at this farm which is now her home. This bit of sentiment inspired by John E. Madden, the father of the youth- ful owners of the "great mare who during the five years that she was before the pub- lic never knew defeat, and who as a brood mare has produced the two fastest trot- ters-Adrnu .1 Dewey (2:04%) and Lord Ho<berts (2:07%)-ever mothered by any ma- tron, and whose daughter, Nancy McKer- ron (2:18%) is considered very likely to this year make her the first dam of three 2:10 trotters.

When many horsemen and citizens assem- bled at Hamburg Place to-day Nancy Hanks, looking uncommonly well for a mare who has reached the age of 23 years was first led out and much admired, for Kentuckians still cling to the endearir j ap- pellation of "Our Nancy," which was be- stowed upon her when she was crowned queen of the turf by trotting her mile In " 04 at Terre Haute, Ind., September 23, I»9'> Next came her daughters, Nancy Mc- Kerron (2:18%;, Markla (2:l»k) pacing, and the unnamed yearling filly by Todd (2:14%). These were followed by Nancy's grandson, Vice Commodore (2:11). by Bingen (2:0G>4). With this illustrious quintet in the "re- ceiving line" there was a parade of all the horses on the farm, and among them there

were many distinguished individuals.

\s a souvenir of the occasion Mr. Madden

had prepared a folder, on which appeared a

nhotograph of Nancy Hanks and Narion, ,r flrst foal, taken in 1890, and below it as printed the following:

ma rebred in Kentucky, was named b, he, breeder for the mother of Abraham Lin- coln. The selection w: s a most happy one honoring as it did the one who gave to the nation him who became one of its great

"""Nancy Hanks, the trotter, became the world's champion, and her name 1 i still a household word wherever the American harness horse is known."

Said by Abraham Lincoln. ••I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light that t have. I must stand with everybody that stands right, stand with him while he Is right and part company with him when ho Is wrong/' (This sentiment embellishes the ! wall of an English college.) 1 "Let us have faith tha* right makes might, and In that tann iet us. to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand It. - Cooper Institute address. *»m„„ "The mystic cords of memory, stretching from evcrv battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our na- tures-First inaugural address.

"With malice toward none, with rharit> for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in and bind up the nation- wounds "-From second inaugural address "An army whose stomach and feet are not taken care of will not do much fighting. — The late Robert Bonner, noted lover of trotting horses. esteemed this saying

highly ) NANCY HANKS.

Vollowlng the equine reception, the many visitors wfre invited Into the Madden home, where they partook of tea and cakes- with Edward and Joseph Madden, the youthful owners of the trotters they had Just seen.

over the* tea and cakes that the veaXs daughter of Nancy Hanks was christened Mary Todd, wh.ch was he maid- en name of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.

to "Nancy ±-taiiKs,

her "solid comfort in her ripe old age. She has that, to be sura. -

MOTHER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Prairie child

Brief as dew, What winds of wonder

Nourished you?

Rolling plains

Of billowy green. Fair horizon

Blue, serene.

Lofty skies

The slow clouds climb Where burnine stars

Beat out the time.

These and dreams

Of fathers bold. Battled longings,

Hopes untold

Gave to you

A heart of fire. Love of deep waters,

Brave desire.

Ah. when a youth's rapture

Went out in pain And all seemed over,

Was all in vain?

Oh. soul obscure!

Whose wings life bound And soft death folded

Under the ground;

Wilding lady,

Still and true. Who gave us Lincoln

And never knew;

To you, at last.

Our praise, our tears. Love and a song

Through the nation's tears.

Mother of Lincoln,

Our tears, our praise; A battle flar And the victor's bays. -Harriet Monroe, in Century Magazine, January. 1909.

p •■ -• — -i ir— i i , I, - - ' - •■'

JERSEY OBSERVES THE DAY.

Dinners and Patriotic Services Held Throughout the State.

The ^ehtennlal of Abraham Lincoln's birth was widely celebrated In New Jer- sey and in all the territory about New

York.

Newark began at daybreak with the firing of twenty-one guns in salute in Branch Brook Park, and salutes were fired also at noon in Military Park, and at sunset In Lincoln Park. The celebra- tion ended with a municipal dinner. In both afternoon and evening exercises were held In the First Presbyterian Church, and many speeches were made, among them one by the Mayor, Jacob Haussling, and one by John Temple Graves.

The chief feature of Plainfleld's cele- bration was a speech by Major Gen. Newton M. Curtis, "hero of Fort Fischer" —a narrative of his own personal contact with Lincoln in ttie war— before an au- dience of 2.000 in the First Baptist Church. Morrlstown's celebration was of a musical and military nature. It was held in the First Presbyterian Church, the military organizations attending. Patriotic music was sung and played, and selections from Lincoln's speeches were read. '

In other towns the day was honored In various ways. In the Oranges with a military parade in the morntng, patriotic exercises, music, and speaking In the afternoon; in Bayonne with a mass meet- ing In Public School 8; in Long Branch chiefly with a dinner of the Board of iBea-xe and their guests, where toasts were givcik-to " Our Country " and "' Our Mar- tyred President," and at Montclalr, in the evening, \ with speeches and music in the First Baptist Chturch.

At Nutley, N. J., two tablets, one bear- ing the roster^cf Nutley men who fought tor the Union, the other Lincoln's Gettys- burg address, were unveiled in the after- noon in Park School. A eulogy of Lin- coln was delivered by Everett P. Wheeler of this city.

In Asbury Park there were several big meetings; in the morning Mayor Appleby spoke on the life of Lincoln in Morrow's Hall; a similar meeting was held in the library in the afternoon, and in the eve- ning a dinner was given by the Lincoln CluT). At Ossining, N. Y., services ap- propriate to the day were held in the new high school.

The main celebration at Paterson, N. J., was held at the armory of the Fifth Regiment after a salute of 100 guns had been fired at noon by the Sons of Vet- erans. Fully 11,000 persons crowded tho hall, and cheers greeted the G. A. R. men when they marched in. There was sing- ing of National anthems, military musk: by the band, and an oration by former Governor of New Jersey John W. Griggs.

LINCOLN'S MOTHER HONORED.

Wreath from 2,500 School Children Is Placed on Her Grave.

INDIANAPOLIS. Ind., Feb. 12.— On the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's mother, at Lincoln City, Ind., was placed this afternoon a wreath from the school children of Indianapolis. The wreath was purchased by 1-cent contri- butions from 2.600 eighth-grade pupils. A mass meeting was heid at Tcmlinson Hall, Indianapolis, this afternoon in honor of Lincoln.

a/, aj 0 /

HORSES RECEIVE

NANCY HANKS AT HOME

Famous Trotting Mare, Named for Mother of Martyred President, to Be Principal Figure at Unique Cel- ebration on J. E. Madden's Farm

. LEXINGTON, Ky„ Feb. 10.— (Spe- cial.)—"Nancy Hanks at lioroe. 2 p. in. to 5 p. m. February 12, 1909, Hamburg place," is a copy of an announcement sent out during the present week by John E. Madden, who has planned the most unique entertainment ever given in honor of a horse in this country. The famous mare and one time trotting champion was named in honor of the mother of Abraham Lincoln, and the reception to be given in her honor •will be on the same day and at the same hour that the 100th anniversary of Lincoln is celebrated at the Lin- coln birthplace in La Rue county, Kentucky, which will be presided over by President Roosevelt.

The barn in which Nancy Hanks holds forth will be decorated in all of the gay colors and the noted matron will wear a, collar of roses and during the reception she will receive visitors, each of whom will be permitted to pat her on the head, rub her nose and feed her fruits, candy and lump sugar, which will be provided for the oc- casion by the master of Hamburg place. In the receiving line will be John E. Madden, Edward and Joseph Madden, who control the destinies of the trotting department of Hambuig place, and the noted daughters of Nancy Hanks, Marion, Markala and Nancy McKerron, and her famous grandson, Vice Commodore, 2:11.

Thoroughbred Reception

Not only will the visitors to the re- ception of Nancy Hanks be permitted to rub elbows with her and her daugh- ters and grandson, but all of the other horses at the farm, trotters and thor- oughbreds will pass through the re- ceiving line, and in addition invitations have been sent to Peter the Great, J. J. Audubon. Onward, Susie Onward and other noted horses at the Patchen Wilkes farm, just across the road, asking for their presence on the his- toric occa-sion.

Nancy Hanks is regarded by Madden as one of the greatest mares in the country, and lie is perhaps more com- pletely wrapped up in her and has a greater . attachment for her than was ever known before between man and beas.t. The one time champion is now 23 years old and has been on the farm since 1896. Included in the produce of Nancy Hanks is Marion, dam of Vice Commodore. 2:11: Admiral Dewey, 2:04%: Lord Roberts, 2:07 % (dead): a mare by imported Meddler (thorough- bred).'the dam of Van Sant (3), 2:29*4; Markala. 2:13%: Nancy McKerron (2), 2:18%, a, 2-year-old, and a yearling, all of which are now owned by Mad- den.

More About Lincoln's Mother.

To the "Editor: I would like to com- ment a little on the letter of Mr.. E. C. Brooks in The Register and Leader o£ March 31, 1912; in which he claims he gives the true version of the family of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. He quotes from a ■ work written by Elizabeth Hanks Hitchcock: to prove that Nancy Hanks was descended from a New England or Massachusetts family. There's no truth whatever in this claim; there's not a single line of record to prove this. Not even, a tradition. Such a claim borders on. the ridiculous. It was started by the Hankses of Massachusetts.

In Lea & Hutchinson's work on "The American Pedigree and Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln," this claim of Eliza- beth Hanks Hitchcock was alluded to and utterly ignored. It says: "Concern- ing the New England ancestry of the Hankses, we feel reluctantly compelled to relinquish the line of Plymouth ancestry of the Hanks family as utterly unten- able."

In this historical work of Lea & Hut- chinson they confessed their inability to throw any light on the Hanks family as to their origin in America as follows: "In other words, we still lack legal demonstrations of the paternity of Joseph Hanks, husband of Nancy' Shipley, and father of Nancy Hanks, the. mother of me president." •

' In all other histories of Abraham Lin- coln' the same words were used. They ut- terly failed to record a single line eon-' reining the family up to Joseph Hanks, father of Nancy Hanks.

The writer congratulates himself for being' the first man in America who un- ravelled the mystery of the family of

.Nancy Hanks. I consulted very closely every scrap of Virginia history from Jamestown to the revolution; I did this, fully knowing that they were an old Virginia family. I was rewarded by lo- cating- Thomas Hanks In Gloucester county, Va., in 1673, at the mouth of the York river. This Thomas Hanks was ; without any doubt, whatever, the great- | igreat-grandfather of Nancy Hanks, mother of President Lincoln. From the arrival of this Thomas Hanks in Vir- ginia to the birth of Nancy Hanks, 111 years had elapsed.

It is not generally known that Abra- ham Lincoln was married twice. His first, wife was Mary Shipley. His second wife was Bethsheba Herring. From the sec- ond marriage sprang Tlionns Lincoln, father of the president. Dan Ford.

In my study of Lincoln, the phenomena of whose existence and the wonder of whose being these few lines try to draw, I have not been able to free him from his mother, Nancy Hanks. Someone gave him his great sense of principle, made falsehood and the other small change of crime stupid, made him create within him a self that he could be at peace with, that he could face his neighbors, his town, his state, his country with. Some- one passed to this lone child of our harsh, lonely frontier something that on a simi- lar frontier Luther's mother gave to young Martin. That same something

Caxlyle's mother gave him and Cornelia I the Gracchi. In those almost first hours, ' days, years, Abe got it; the remaining forty-five were simply for growing, de- veloping, maturing. Perhaps her death burned all into his tender, trembling nature. This boy of nine, who fifteen years later spread his coat over the mound that covered one he had dreamed would be his life companion to keep the rain from reaching her, must have had the films of his character all filled and set for life by that mother, that one to whom "he owes all he ever was," as he later said. — Gutzon Borglum in Woman's | World for February.

^UAf% 19/ ^

HIS MOTHERS

By Gertrude Morrison

ONE cannot speak of Lincoln's debt1 to his mother alone, for Nancy Hanks proved too delicate a flower for the prairies of Indiana, and died while Abraham was too young to keep any defi- nite recollection of her. Yet something vague and indefinite must have lingered, since, some little time after his mother was buried, the nine-year-old lad sent a pathetic note to a parson, as they called ministers in that day and region, asking him to come to "read a sermon" over the grave of his mother. In the scattered prairie settlements of Indiana, many peo- ple had to be laid away without this bit of comfort. But that did not seem right to the lad, and he treasured in his mind a longing to have his gentle mother paid every mark of respect and honor. The good man was so touched by the boyish letter that he rode over two hundred miles to conduct, in the presence of the neigh- bors who gathered in, a simple, sympa- thetic ceremony over that lowly grave in the wilderness.

Dying two years after the family moved to Indiana, her loving spirit lived on in! the boy to whom she had given birth in, a log cabin in Kentucky. That cabin was subsequently used as a barn ; then, after having been moved some distance, as a slaughter house. The site was about twelve miles from Elizabethtown, the county seat of Hardin County, Kentucky. A log of that little old cabin, never used as a human habitation after the Lincolns moved out, was once sent by express to New York as a relic. I never quite un- derstood that craving for a souvenir of Lincoln until I met, in college, a girl from Illinois, whose mother's choicest posses- sion, one that hangs prominently on the walls of her hall, oddly at variance with its luxury, is a plain, painted panel cut from an ordinary door. But its carving is more precious to that household than the most exquisite workmanship of the East; neither Japan nor India could wrest with their fretted treasures the honored place accorded that simple pine board ; for onj it is carved, rudely enough, "just "A. L." The tool was a jack-knife; the hand that carved later signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This rare and unique origi- nal is to go down in the family a price- less heirloom, not of a. hero, but simply of a beloved friend and neighbor.

Neighbors were neighbors in the train- ing of Lincoln ; so much so that when, two years after the death of his wife, Thomas Lincoln thought it well to marry again, he went back to the vicinity of Elizabeth- town to look up an old friend and former neighbor, Mrs. Sally Johnston. She made, a good, kind, faithful stepmother. In ma-

ture life, after he had become president of the United States, Lincoln gave her credit for those principles of integrity which were the guide of his life. She' taught him all that he knew about the! Bible, and laid the foundations for a man, "plain, but wise, witty, and great."

The character of Mrs. Sally Johnston is perhaps best illustrated by an amusing little account of her courtship that has come down to us. Presumably she was somewhat taken aback on opening her door one morning to find Thomas Lincoln, who she supposed was in Indiana, stand- ing on her threshold, and looking as if he wished to interest her particularly in what he had to say.

"Yes, I remember you very well, Tommy Lincoln. What has brought you back to old Kentucky?"

"Well, my wife Nancy is dead." "Why, you don't say so!" "Yes, she died more than a year ago. I have come back to Kentucky to look for another wife. Do you like me, Mrs. John- ston ?"

"Yes, I like you, Tommy Lincoln." "Do you like me well enough to marry me ?"

"Yes, I like you, Tommy Lincoln, and, I like you well enough to marry you; but I can't marry you now."

"Why not?"

"Because I am in debt, and I could never think of burdening the man I marry with debt; it would not be right."

Mrs. Johnston handed him a worn little account book whose items ranged from fifty cents all the way to one dollar and twenty-five cents, totaling about twelve dollars. Unobserved, as he talked on, Thomas Lincoln slipped the little book into his pocket. He was back in the after- noon, receipts, or an acknowledging, illit- erate "X" exonerating Mrs. Johnston from all further obligation.

"Why, Tommy Lincoln, you have gone and paid off all my debts."

"Yes, and will you marry me now?" "Yes, I will, Tommy Lincoln." They were married at nine o'clock the next morning, leaving the following day for Indiana. This story is vouched for by one wh was present at the wedding. Little dreamed he, or the ones who were marrying, that, as this woman of high principle shaped the growing boy who waited in the home to which she was go- ing, so must rise or fall, some day, the' welfare of a great nation.

TO HIS MOTHER

In a rude log cabin among the hills of Kentucky a boy baby was born one hundred and six years ago. The home to which he came was a very poor one. The floor was the earth itself, pounded hard, and the walls were rough logs. The cracks between the logs were filled with chips of wood and mud to keep out the cold winds, for it was winter when the little boy

There was one small room, with a great chimney at one end, and only one or two little windows to let in the sunshine. In the chimney was a big fire-place, which served not only to warm the room but to light it at night as well, for the father and mother was so poor they had no other light. In this fire-place, over the great blazing logs, such food as they had was cooked and near the fire the little cradle, if there was one, was placed to keep the baby warm. There were no toys for the little one as he grew older, no pretty-books such as we have today.

From a baby' he grew to be a romp- ing boy, and by and by was taught his letters at his mother's knee, and learned to read and spell. All the stories that she knew were told him over and over again, und what bouka she could get were read to him.

He had no clothes such as boys wear today. His mother \,:>uld take thz father's rifle and go lato the forest that grew almost at tne door aid shoot bears and deor an-l other ani- mals. From the skins of these she made caps, clothing, leggings and moccasins for him, and the meat fur- nished food for the family.

While we see that the child's early life was far different from our own in these many ways, it was the same in one way. The mother's love for her little one was just as sweet and strong as any mother's love could be. And through this love and the early teachings of the mother, the child's character was formed.

Amid great struggles and hardships the boy grew to be a man, and many years after became the President of the United States.

"All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." These were the words often repeated by Abraham Lincoln, as a poor boy, as a man, and as a President. \

came.

/ f/t

Classmate, Feb. 7, 1920 Mother, Death of Lincoln's

In the (tying testimony of Lincoln's mother we have the answer to our question: "Abraham Lincoln, you have my heart." What his friends observed Lincoln con- firmed many a time with his own testi- mony. It was the heart of his mother that inspired him all through his life. In the crises of the Civil War, when he had to sustain and to direct the fortunes of this great nation, it was his mother's faith that made his own and that strengthened him for his superhuman task.

When the war was over and the great victory was won, there were great crowds serenading the President : one day at the White House. There were shouting multi- tudes all over the green lawn and the broad avenues. Old Glory rippled in the breeze, and far away the cannon of victory shook the hills and echoed over the broad river. Lincoln looked out upon the sea of hu- manity. The multitude hushed their cheering. His first words were:

"I sincerely thank God for the occasion of this call."

None but he heard in these words the tones of that mother who was looking on him from the home of the angels. It was the same tone that he had heard so often in the shack cabin beneath the flaming maples.

A Mother's Influence in the Making of ^""^ Lincoln ?-['

.REV. WILLIAM J.

EVER/ high school familial v> ith tr iame of ianks, the

mother, of Abraham L She has

been described as slender, delicate, rather pale and sad, of a shrinking nature, yet heroic. Miss Tarbell, in her "Life of Lin- coln," says, "She was a sweet-tempered and beautiful woman, whom tradition paints as the center of all the country merrymaking." The Hanks girls were also very religious, and, being fine singers, were prominent at camp-meetings, where they occasionally indulged in a shout ac- cording to the Methodist custom of those days. Carl Schurz is the only author known to the writer who describes Mrs. Lincoln in an altogether different light. He paints her as coarse and ignorant, and with a melancholy disposition. His- torically, the writer believes this to be in- correct, in view of the fact that historians generally have agreed otherwise.

In a mere hut, on a poor scrub farm near Hodgensville, L#rue County, Ken- tucky, Feb. 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. His cradle, the only one he ever knew, was his mother's arms. His only playmate in his earliest childhood was his sister Nancy, who bore this name during the life of her mother, but later took the name of Sarah, after her stepmother. Lin- coln's playground was the primeval forest about him. He never owned a toy, for toys were expensive, and there was but little money in the Lincoln home. When the boy was seven years old, he and his little sister Nancy trudged behind their father and mother into the trackless wilds of southern Indiana. Here, on Little Pigeon Creek, Thomas Lincoln established his new home.

The land chosen was covered with dense forest, and no shelter awaited the family he brought with him, so he hastily cut down some young saplings and con- structed a shed, into which he moved his wife and children. The building shielded the family only on three sides, through the freezing storms of a long winter. It had no floor, no windows, and the ground floor turned into mud when the thaw set in. There was not even a skin to hang over the open front to keep out the storms. Pegs were driven into the wall, and young Lincoln nimbly climbed up these to his bed of leaves in the rude loft.

Nancy Hanks could not withstand the rigors of the frontier life. Hardship, ex- posure, and anxiety had begun to tell on her. In the summer of 1818, malarial fever broke out in the neighborhood. Her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Spar- row, were both stricken with the disease. They were brought to the Lincoln home to be cared for. Nancy Hanks waited on them, and attended also to the cares of her own household, pouring out her life and strength for others, as Elizabeth Hutchinson, the martyred mother of An- drew Jackson, had done. Both uncle and aunt died. The extreme burdens had be- gun to tell on the already overburdened mother, and she too fell an easy victim to the disease. The nearest physician was thirty-five miles away. The swift fever soon burnt out her life. As the end drew near, young Abraham knelt sobbing beside his dying mother. He was losing his best friend. She laid her hand on his head and gave him her last message, calling upon him to be good to his father and sis-

HAMPTON, D. D.

•at; calling upon all to be good to . ...ii.-i.her and to worship God.

It must have been a most remarkable death-bed scene. Impressions were made upon the mind of young Lincoln which were never effaced, and which heartened him in after years for the strenuous tasks he was called upon to perform. Out of the sick-chamber of Mrs. Lincoln have come certain incidents of compelling in- terest, revealing not only a mother's love but her earnest desire that this son be true to the highest ideals of life.

It has generally been supposed that at

Nancy Hanks

[From "You and I," by Harriet Mon- roe. Reprinted by permission of the au- thor and of her publishers, the Macmillan Company of New York}

Prairie Child,

Brief as dew, What winds of wonder

Nourished you?

Rolling plain

Of billowy green, Fair horizons,

Blue, serene.

Lofty skies

The slow clouds climb, Where burning stars

Beat out the time.

These, and the dreams

Of fathers bold, Baffled longings,

Hopes untold.

Gave to you

A heart of fire, Love like waters,

Brave desire.

Ah, when youth's rapture

Went out in pain, And all seemed over,

Was all in vain?

O soul obscure,

Whose wings life bound, And, soft death folded

Under the ground.

Wilding lady,

Still and true, Who gave us Lincoln

And never knew:

To you at last

Our praise, our tears, Love and a song

Through the nation's years.

Mother of Lincoln,

Our tears, our praise; A battle-flag

And the victor's bays!

this time Lincoln promised his mother he would never use intoxicating liquor, for he made this promise when he was nine years old and that was his age when his mother died. He kept the promise he made her to the day of his death. When he had grown to manhood, during the course of an address he read a pledge he had written, whii^h ran. as follows: "Whereas, the use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage is productive of pauperism, degradation, and crime; and believing it our duty to discourage that which pro-

duces more evil than good, we, there- fore, pledge ourselves to abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors as a bever- age."

Mr. Lincoln was always a firm exponent of total abstinence. The influence of Nancy Hanks, through the agency of a

Legion.

Bishop Luther B. Wilson tells us that one day, while the mother was lying crit- ically ill, the barefoot boy was playing outside the cabin door and the father was seated by the bedside. The mother was saying that it seemed to her that Abe's life was a reproduction of her own. "But, mother," said Abe's father, "he can- not sing as you can !" Possibly Thomas Lincoln then had a vision of the Nancy Hanks who, as a comely country lass, used her fine voice in church services, camp-meetings, and gatherings of her country folk. This may have been one of the attractions that drew him to her side as an ardent wooer. The dying mother seemed to have the face of her son before her as she made answer to her husband, and she even seemed to be possessed with the spirit of prophecy as she looked out into the future. "It may be that he can- not sing as I can sing, but it may be that he will make others sing." How grandly nature endowed him with the power to make others sing ! He gave a new song of freedom to an entire human race ! He inspired poets to sing of liberty and free- dom as they never had before ! Lincoln brought into the songs of the world a major note that was heard then for the first time.

As the end drew near, and her spirit struggled to break away and return to God, who gave it, the dying mother pressed her son to her bosom and bade him a long and loving farewell, saying, "Be something, Abe." Throughout the years of struggle and toil that were to come, Lincoln heard again and again the voice of his^ angel mother saying, "Be something, Abe." When honors at last were his, the admonition of that mother would come to him from the courts of heaven — "Be something, Abe." The words bring to mind the exhortation of the mother of Horace Greeley, when young Greeley was leaving home to go out into the world for the first time — "Try and be somebody." Mr. Lincoln once said to an intimate friend, his eyes suffused with tears, "All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother — blessings on her memory." Strange that there have been those who have said that Mr. Lincoln in these words referred to his stepmother, when his stepmother was still living when he spoke them.

This boy, but nine years old when his mother slipped away to heaven, loved her with all the ardor of his soul. His father's knowledge of carpentry enabled him to make the pine box that was to contain the body of his wife. Young Abe stood by while this rough box was being nailed together, and when his father low- ered the rude casket into the grave, which he had made in an adjoining forest. There were no religious services con- nected with his mother's burial, and this almost broke the boy's heart. An itinerant Methodist preacher named Parson Elkins had occasionally conducted religious serv- ices in the neighborhood. Lincoln secured his address, and the first letter he ever wrote was addressed to this minister, re- questing him to come and hold religious services over the lonely grave in the forest. Receiving an affirmative answer, the boy

TA.NCY was not troubled^ at her fireplace with a multiplicity of cooking utensils like a housewife of to- day. Her chief reliance was the Dutch oven, a big iron pot with a cover, standing on long legs and kept continuously on the coals. After the Dutch oven, the most important ar- ticle was her long-handled fry- ing pan. On this she roasted the game with which the lar- der of her home was always filled, both in Kentucky and later in Indiana. Here, too, she fried the salt pork and bacon which the pioneer always preferred to venison, rabbit, wild turkey, and, of course, it was on this frying pan that she made the hot bread and cakes which went with the meats. One of the proudest ac- complishments of housewives at that date was the ability to turn a cake high in the air at the precise moment it should be turned. It was like the feat of which skilled cooks so boast — turning an onielet at the critical instant.

Her bread baking she did in a clay oven — not so good an oven as that which Thomas' mother had used back in Virginia, for that was Ibrick, but it was an oven of the same kind. Nancy had an outside fire- place, too, where in summer she kept her Dutch oven going, and in the fall fried out lard, and made soap and prepared the tallow for the can- dles. All through the summer, like every pioneer housewife, she gath- ered wild berries and dried them. All through the fall she cut and strung apples and pumpkins to dry. It was a tiVne of dehydration, as we used to say so importantly during the war, but there was nothing that we tried to teach then that Nancy Lincoln did no know and practise. In the fall, too, she wrapped up in dry leaves or bits of paper apples or pears to keep for her children's Christmas. I found a little Ken- tucky housekeeper of Nancy's type doing this very thing last fall.

She was skilled in spinning and ■weaving, and there were few days that did not find her at her loom or wheel, or cutting up and making into garments for Thomas, little Sarah, the baby Abraham, the linsey wool- Bey she had spun. From her loom, too, came woolen blankets in the fine and simple designs of her time. When she collected by long patience enough pieces of cotton for a quilt she patched it in some famous pat- tern, and as she worked she rocked her baby in the simple cradle we can well believe Tom Lincoln had made fiiv her. Every household had one, and probably Nancy's was a better piece of craftsmanship than many, fur her husband was no mean cabi- net, maker, as we shall later see, given his time and chances.

We can be sure that Nancy Lin- coln's working day was systematic: Those early housekeepers followed a strict schedule, washing on Monday, Ironing on Tuesday, baking on Sat- urday, church-going on Sunday. She made the best of her time, and like every self-respecting woman of that

day, rarely failed to find time rest a spell."

(Copyright, 1923,1

"to

Lincoln's Mother

How American Historio

DUNHAM WRIGHT is the son of Abraham Lincoln's cousin, Celia Hanks Wright — Celia Hanks before her marriage to Mr. John D. Wright. Celia Hanks (Wright) was the niece of Nancy Hanks (Lincoln), Abraham Lincoln's mother.

According to the "Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln," by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, Nancy Hanks, born February 5, 1784, was left an orphan at her parents' death in 1793. She married on the 12th of June, 1804, Thomas Lincoln; and her uncle, Richard Berry, became surety on the marriage bond. She became the mother of Sarah Lincoln in 1807, of Abra- ham Lincoln in 1809, and of Thomas Lincoln, a younger child, who died in babyhood. He was buried in the old cemetery near the Cave Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln was born.

Dr. Christopher Graham, who attended the wed- ding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, says, ac- cording to Miss Tarbell's history:

"I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at- her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian — -and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bear-meat, venison, wild turkey, and ducks' eggs, wild and tame, so com- mon that you could buy them at two bits a bushel; maple sugar, swung oh a string to bite off for coffee or whisky; syrup in big gourds; peach and honey; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in."

"Nancy Hanks," says Dr. Robert H. Browne, "was a healthy, pleasant-appearing, confiding, shapely fashioned, if not a handsome woman. She had more than an ordinary education and knowledge of affairs for her time."

"The home into which the child [Abraham Lincoln] was born," says Miss Tarbell, "was the ordinary one of the poorer Western pioneer, a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single win- dow, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which is so familiar, has been over- drawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better

| Regard Nancy Hanks

authority on the life of that day, and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that "it is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in the winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home-woven 'Kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife."

This farm where Abraham Lincoln was born was on some of the poorest farm-land in the section, ac- cording to Mr. J. Roger Gore's record of the memories of Austin Gollaher, a childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln's in the region of his birth. But Thomas Lincoln had been attracted to the place by its most striking possession — a spring in a cave, from which Mowed a pure cold water. However, when Abraham Lincoln was four years old the family moved away from the Cave Spring Farm, near which the baby who had died was buried, to a farm on Knob Creek, about fifteen miles away. •

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, his father again moved the family northwestward to Indiana. Austin Gollaher tells us that a few days before they left their Kentucky home at Knob Creek, he and his mother, Mrs. Gollaher, and Abraham Lincoln, then a little boy, and his sister Sarah, of nine years, went with Mrs. Lincoln to say good-by to the grave of her baby, near the Cave Spring Farm.

"We went in their old spring- wagon, pulled by Mr. Keith's mule and one of my father's. Mrs. Lincoln covered the grave with wild flowers and vines we had gathered along the way. Then we all kneeled down there on the hillside, and my mother prayed while Mrs. Lincoln said good-by to the little mound under the sheltering trees. On the way back, we stopped at the old Cave Spring to get a drink of that good water; and we climbed the hill to the cabin in which Abe was born, that his mother might look on it once again before she left."

It was the last time that Nancy Hanks Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln ever saw place where the boy was born.

"God bless my mother. All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

~TH K SATURDAY SERMON

Br The Rev. SaMUEI W. Purvis, D. D.

'Marvelous Motherhood"

Text: Carry him to /u'a mother.— Kings 4 :19.

HEUF is a domestic tragedy that makes tl>c whole world a km. Fifty-three miles north ol .Jerusalem, H^;^ t\«»

Gettysburg might forever have been B beautiful little obscure on m Adams countv, l'enusyivunia. had not one the worlds great battles be

fought

Sktinem situated in one of Hie most beautiful spots on the globe, surrounded

»*.°U™ h^rdsnri!gl and ladeu train, bubbling springs J"" .. , grove's, was an ideal place for an ideal Some, presided over by one o£ the ta mous women of antiquity.

F.lislm. the prophet, used to pass OS ;-nis borne on Lis «J to Mou lit C a

„1 ,,,,,1 hack 111111 Ml to lie' BCllOOl "t

'he p ophets k1,;bJeriW.p, of which he was the bead. Something in his boar- hi- led Ibis woman to conclude bo was ., "man of G-J, for -lie said one day to "hi? bnatanu. 1 perceive hat a an of (>.d is passing by us eon - ,11V" Women have keener spiritual Perceptions than men. (n ninny home, !f there is any religion at. all In- wife lias it. This woman said to nrr mis- hand "Why dont vvc ask bun to stop ami come in and be a blessing and A benediction to us V Let us bind f"l bim n little room and place therein »bed a si,,,,,, u pitcher and a candle- stick, and when I omes this way be

,.«„ Vest there" Tic suggestion was adopted and Hie man ol God found tbero a borne. ,

There came io Ih.i homo an only child, line day the boy to lowed th father out io ihe harvest field. He ran and Dlayed among the reapers me blazing hot sun of tr.M O'WjWl coun- try beat dowr on bis bead Of a Slid den things began to whirl ahou him. He threw up bis bands to Ins he ad and cried, -My head! My head!" 'Ihe fath- er said to some of I bo servants. Lorry bin, to his mother." They bore him to the bouse, lie sat upon bis mothers |„p nil noon, and then died. Broken hearted she carried him to the little ,„0„, of the man of Hod. '.Hie prophet is sent for. He comes quickly from Mount Carmel to Sliunem. lie goes into ,he room with the lad. tries to u-siiscitate bim — pinys as he works ■corks u s be prays. Kre lone the boy s ,.ves lire open and be is calling for Ins

""sorrow is turned to joy: Hie house

,,f grief becomes o house of gladness^ Happy the borne when God and Oods servants are gnests-whethor It be Shunein, Bethany or the very home where you live. History Gives Us a Thought

Nero's mother was a murderess. She gave to this world the most cruel man in the history of humanity. By- ron's mother was proud, irreligious, worfuly minded; disliked her "brat. She gave the world one of the most dissolute, dissipated, profligate sons that the world of literature has ever had.

John Wesley's mother, Susanna, was a praying, sensible woman and gave to the world one of the richest and grandest characters. today she is The foster mother of one of the largest denominations of this twentieth century. George Washington's mother was a worn- ,n of rare good sense and practical piety Sh< gave lo the world, to Amer- ica a man whom we are proud to cali "the Father of our Country.

In ihe noithwest section of Spen- cer countv, In liana, one hundred and fiftv miles from Louisville, forty miles northeast of F.vansviUe, is the little hamlet of Lincoln City. There s a gen- eral store, a blacksmith simp, and gar- age a railroad station and a few bouses. Oh ves. and a very good school, to which the vouth cauie from consider- able distance. I liked the rugged, car ,„sr, Bun-t«n:ied faces of the people Made me think of that remark of I hom as Jefferson, "The chosen people of t;od are those who till the soil.

1 calked r.r Ihe litttle lull where .loops the mo-hcr of Lincoln. On th~ simple little granite column are th

Xancv Hanks Lincoln Mi ther of Abraham Lincoln Died October 5, ISIS A soil oo Vein s.

prT.TfiTOTTR NOTTOKS

Instinctively I removed my hat. A mist came oyer my eyes. A vision of Nancy Hunks swept over my mind "Died aged 35 !" Worn. 1 ired. bad. [hot troublesome rough!. Biting pov- .rtv was her pioneer Portion. Uepriva- .icn and loneliness her lot. But on |,cr tomb wei-u four words that press the highest praise that tongue can utter or pen indite:

Mother of Abraham Lincoln She went down int.. the valley of the shadow and gave hiin birth. I turn nductantlv away. Shtteen ">'l"„1" he south as the bird flics, the Oh o i- dancinr on its way io the. sea. lht ..en is sinking. It is growing dusk. Westward "through the sycamores ttu candle light '.- gleaming on the banks „t the Wabash"— jiwt three count us nwav Great gift God has given woman- Kind— mothering his sons'. 1 think I wn better understand the feeling of Th" devout Iloman Catholic toward Alary, the Mother of the Redeemer. The Motto on the Wall

A generation ago there used to be an old-rashioned motto hung on the wall 1 do not see it any more— "What is Home Without a Mother?"

It. would produce a scream of der.Mv, laughter lo suggest such an old-fogy custom now. However. 1 am not alto- gether sure but that what the United States needs is a million old-fashioned mothers who shall realize that the great- est gifl in the world is motherhood, and that the mightiest institution on earth is the home. . . .

Often the soul-n.nl boring which a chUd ought lo receive 's delegated to the public school or the Sunday school teacher. It leaves the mother fie* to dress to gossip, to attend leas which

Oliver Wendell Hoi » well described

as "giggle, gabble, gobble and git. "i am a minister and a public teacher and strive to magnify my office But Ood made mothers before he made min- isters; and 1 defy any minister to do any worth while work ... his parish if ?£? hon.es and the households are be nurser.es of worldlmess. lh.ld.cn a. neglected in home training and left go "wld .n the vain hope that some time tbev will be overtaken by some evan- gelist and lassoed in n revival. 1 he Lord he merciful to the woman who runs a barroom in her home and teaches her children to drink and disregard law. the woman who has a gaming table when they play cards, putting the fire „f gambling In her sons blood 1 tie- quentlv meet women who through yen. s Have been thrusting I heir sons be.vond the reach of the arm of I be church and now agonize in despair because the seen, lo be beyond the reach of the arm ,,f God She's a mistaken mother WHO thinks She can go the way of the smart set and that her sons and daughters will go the way of tiod and the chuicl Fortunately, I believe, there are a va»t maturity of godly mothers.

6-....,.,.,. I,., «niH "If I could mother

till he gets a new wife." William Boss Wallace said :

They nay that man Is mighty.

He governs laud and era. He wields a m.Kl.ty scepter

O'er lesser powers that l>e. Bat a mightier power and stronger

Man from His throne has hurled For the hand Hint the c« le

Is the hand Hint rules the world.

I can understand in a measure how men forsake God and live a "worldly life, but the most terrible moral anomaly ill our civilization today is a God-less Christ-loss mother with little Uuldro having around her home. A woman may be a politician or a s-a captain if "lie wi 1 1 . but nature and God mode he „ bndv and mind to be a mother, lie now-er of a mother in forming the chat K of the child is beyond calculation ■'„ nnv time separate the name of Monica from that of Her ™n Alig^tr nc Never despairing when he was sunk 111 nrof lie: cv— watching, pleading, praying with ouch tears and fervor that the B shop o Carthage cried out in admira- tion "Uo thy ways; it is impossible bat the son of these tears should "r sh"' In all literature there are no more noble passages than Saint Augustine consecrates to the mem ory of that faithful Christian mother. A Mother's Crown of Joy

I do not know of any happiness and pride so touching to behold os that of " E other when her boy has made . good

On the twentieth of December. LH). Jacob A. Hiis was (he guest of 1 res lent and Mrs. Hoosevelt at breakfast ■ Washington. In the course of the conversation Mr. Riis happened to men- tion thai his mother, eighty years of age ving in Bibe, Denmark, was very ill Interrupting the, breakfast, the l'resi dent called for writing materials and immediately sent the following message '•White House. "Washington, Dec. ".0,190-. "To Mrs. Biis, Kibe. Denmark:

••Your son is breakfasting with ns. We send you our loving sym- pathy in your illness .

-Theodore and Kdith Roosevelt. Mr Riis said : "When that dear old mother of mine gels that cablegram from the President of Ihe United States slit ill get right out of bed cured, and live at i£« ten years longer" But two months later this funeral notice ap pcarcd in the newspapers:

SS&a ofbJ.c-.2b -V Kll.. Kh hu.oad UiU. TanTsure, however, that, to ,the ..last in that Scandinavian mothers h™. m» oy unspeakable that he- boy had s» beside the President of the 1 SlSav.' son, daughler. tomorrow is "Mother's Day." Go right to that .J,;,,,, kiss Irnr. and tell her she « . the dearest mother in the world. Of course, she isn't as pretty and kissable as you are Her face has ...ore wrinkles than vours. And there's a reason tor it .lot if you we e sick I hat face would appear more beautiful than an angel s as t beul over you. She will leave you one of these days. The burden on her s oul. d,rs will bi-enk her down. He. hard rough bands will he folded on i her lit less breast. Her tired feet will put slippers and be at res,. 'I hose neglected li„V winch gave you your first baby kiss, will be forever closed, and those sad tired, cob.r-faded eyes will have opened ill eternity. Then your tears, and Your terms of endearment, and your flowers will fall upon the still face- but it will be ton late.

Nancy Hanks

(Written for The Herald of Feb. 12, 1914, by Robert Lincoln O'Brien, then Editor.)

Nancy Hanks — I see the calendar says it is 1914, nearly a century after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me. spirit of the Present, whether any one mortal remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial. I The Present — Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Studebaker of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1879 j and spent $1000 in marking it.

Nancy Hanks— What do you mean? More money than I ever saw in, my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it! Was he a rich de- scendant of mine?

The Present — He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of-fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the state of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor; 10,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedi- cated. The Governor of the state, now one of the great commonwealths of the union, was there, while a distinguished general from afar, •delivered the princi- pal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew any- one to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." I Can there be any mistake about that? "WHAT IS THIS WONDER?"

Nancy Hanks — What is this wonder of wonders? I realized that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box, were buried under the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion , was there to say even a prayer. I sup- posed that if anybody in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilder- ness. My life was short— of only 25 years — and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to expect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling mystery!

The Present — This is the 12th of Feb- ruary!

Nancy Hanks — That was the birthday of my little boy, a slender, awkward fel- low who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden pins driven into a log, up into a bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear what be- came of my little 9-year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

THE WORLD KNOWS OF HIM

The Present — Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your ques- tion number hundreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually bv the "man in the street." Actual millions of people know that the 12th of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in 22 states of the Union, including the imperial state of New- York, has become a legal holiday. Most of the others hold some commemorative exercises. When the great financial I market of the world opened in London this morning, it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, ihe great republic over the. seas, would re-

cord no stock transactions this day. The words "No market — Lincoln's birthday" travel on ocean cables under every sea, and business in the great buildings, 40 stories high, of New York city, has paused today. So it does at Ft. Dear- born— you remember — on Lake Mich- igan, now one of the foremost cities of the world.

Nancy Hanks — Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life, i | cannot wait to hear what it all means !

APPEALS TO MANKIND

The Present — If you had one copy of every book that has been written about him, you would have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited every city which has reared his statue, you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take you to several European capitals. Every possible work that he ever wrote, ,every speech he ever made, every document he ever penned, has been collected, and these have all been printed in sets of books with a fullness such as has been accorded to the works of only a few children of men. You could count on the fingers of two hands, and perhaps of one, the men in all secular history who so vitally appeal to the imagina- tion of mankind today.

Nancy Hanks — And so my little boy came into all this glory in his lifetime!

The Present — Oh, no. He died at 56, as unaware of how the world would eventually regard him as old Christopher Columbus himself. A few months before his death he expected soon to be thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he wrote a letter telling how he should strive to help his successor to carry out the unfinished work. Your little boy saw so little to indicate the place that time has ac- corded him. His widow was hardly able to get from Congress a pension large enough for comfortable support, and yet that same body, in less than a half- century, appropriates $2,000,000 — stop to think of that — for a national monu- ment in his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call eventually for far more than this sum.

LEADING THE IMMORTALS

But I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by rea- son of having known hint. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land. On his 70th birthday his friends gave him a complimentary din- ner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big I world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three- score years and ten w"as that he had shaken hands and conversed in private audience with your little boy, whom this cosmopolite pictured as "leading the procession of the immortals down the centuries."

Nancy Hanks — This is beyond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy — that earnest, sad, ' little fellow of the woods and streams — do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

The Present — That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowl- edge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done. : Nancy Hanks — I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the stoiy.

II PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

The Present — We have in the United States a great democracy. We are mak- ; ing a great experiment for the nations.

Your little boy gave friends of democ- ! racy the world over the largest meas- , ure of confidence in its permanency and success of any man that has ever lived.

More than a million people a year now pour into the United States from lands beyond the seas, most of them j unfamiliar with our language and our customs and our aims. When we Ameri- cans who are older by a few generations go out to meet them we take, as the supreme example of what we mean by our great experiment, the life of Abra- ham Lincoln. And, when we are our- selves tempted in the wad complexity of our material civilization to disregard the pristine ideals of the republic, we see his gaunt figure standing before us, and his outstretched arm pointing to the straighter and simpler path of J righteousness. For he was a liberator of I men in bondage, he was a savior* of I his country, he was a bright and shln- '[iag light.

I He became President of the United

; | States, but that affords small clue to his real distinction. Few Americans ever j refer to him as "President Lincoln." In ! j the jdiom of our people, he is Abraham Lincoln, called by the name you gave him in the wilderness gloom. To that name of your choosing no titles that the vain world knows could add any- thing of honor or distinction. And to- jday, from the Atlantic to the Pacific s?as, and in places under distant skies, cnildren will recite in their schools his words, men will gather about banquet boards to refresh their ideals by hear- ing anew some phase of his wonderful story. Our nation could get along with- out some of its territory, without mil- lions of its people, without masses of its hoarded wealth, but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up on this morn- ing of the 20th century without the memory of Abraham Lincoln — one of the really priceless possessions of the republic

Lincoln9 s Memorable Praise of His Mother a Tribute to Womanhood

2'

"A1

LL that I am and all that I hope to be I owe to my angel mother." This was the tribute paid by Abraham Lincoln in after days to the woman who had so well loved and trained him in the nine years they were permitted to share — for in 1818 Mrs. Lincoln died, leav- ing her husband, Thomas, with their two living children, Abraham and Sarah, in the primitive cabin hidden deep in the forest lands of southern Indiana. • — -

Those first nine years were pre- ^ rs ^ <sarth- \T&al J"*1* ^om"

, an this pioneer mother of Abraham cious, not only to Lincoln but to all Lincoln.

American manhood. "As the twig is j

bent," one well knows, the tree will

grow, and for her tender tending of that one sapling in the then sparce forest of our countrymen we owe to Lincoln's mother an incalculable debt of gratitude. Her son has towered,

on Government land. The mother knew what was before her, and she was willing to face dangers of a life In the forest. "Hope and hard work" was the motto of this pioneer woman. They had made the seven day journey on horseback. Abraham, handling an ex with skill, assisted in clearing

strong and straight, an example to ground for the eighteen foot square

those who study his life. and. as the «aJln' which' a,as' was not finished

before snow came. His bedroom was great melting pot seethes with ^^en the slab ceiling and the roof, strange dreams of many lands, it is and it was reached by a ladder. Crude, well to have such an ideal of clean, home made beds, tables, stools and unselfish manhood to study. benches formed their furniture. With

T r.Mjx. j „ it. v. -r . his father's rifle Abraham shot his

Tn the childhood of Abraham Lin- „,,.„» . ^

ilrst wild turkey, and thereafter

coin was laid the foundation of his helped supply the table with game,

svhich his mother broiled over flaming

mibers while she baked corn bread in

he ashes.

future career as a statesman,

[Lincoln's mother was a great woman. She gave her gifted son an impetus toward the intellectual life and cultivated in his mind high ideals and aims.

Lincoln was born in a rude log cabin near the present town of Hodgeville, Ivy. And there, in the fringe of trees bordering Rock Creek, he used to play. This spot is now marked by a fine memorial building, erected in 1909, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Kentucky's most illustrious son.

The father, Thomas Lincoln, was a good man — a farmer of limited means. He was the son of Abraham Lincoln, a pioneer settler in Kentucky. It was there in 1806 that Thomas married Nancy Hanks, whose ancestors hailed from old Virginia. She is described as a woman of pleasing appearance, be- ing tall, and having dark hair and sparkling hazel eyes. She was a cheerful and religious woman

Their children, Sarah and Abraham (the younger brother having died in infancy) were quite without educa- tional or religious privileges such as people enjoyed in more populous com- munities, so the mother began their education. Like George Washington's mother, she read the Bible to her chil- dren Sunday afternoons and told them scriptural stories.

Abraham took after his mother. . He was eager for books, so she had little difficulty training him to read and to write. Busy woman that she was, she snatched an hour whenever possible for his instruction. She listened to him read a chapter from the Bible end made him study Dilworth's speller.

When Liricoln was 7 years old the family moved to the wilderness of southern Indiana. b»**-"~~'

Thus passed Nancy Lincoln's last

Nancy Hanks tribute by Cool ice

COOLIE Ifto NANCJLHANKS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12.— W)— President Coolidge believes that nothing he could say in tribute to Abraham Lincoln would be better praise than the Lincoln proclama- tion he issued in 1918 as governor of Massachusetts.

As a result the White House, re- sponding to requests for an expres- sion from the President, sent copies of the proclamation to be read to- night at Lincoln's birthday meet- ings in various sections of the country.

In his proclamation Coolidge said:

Five score and ten years ago that Divin6 Providence, which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle,' sent into the world a new life, destined to save a nation. No star, no sign, fore- told his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his ten- der years, from her deathbed in humble poverty, she dowered her son with greatness.

There can be no proper observ- ance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin as into his life men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the na- tion. He broke the might Of op- pression. He restored a race to

Its birtilrlglit. "His i^Ajiti,

has vanished, but his spirit in- creased with the increasing years, the richest legacy of the greatest century.

Men show by what they wor- ship what they are. It is no ac- cident that before the great ex- ample of American manhood our people stand with respect and reverence. And in accordance with this sentiment our laws have provided for a formal recognition of the birthday of Abraham Lin- coln, for In him is revealed our ideals, the hope of our country fulfilled.

Uses His 1918 Proclamation as Governor, Declaring 'She Dow- ered Sop With Greatness^ >

j. M. BECK SPEAKS IN N. Y.

Washington, Feb. 12.-(AP> -ITesi- dent Coolidge believes that nothing he could say in tribute to Abraham L to cota would be better pra.se than tb* Lincoln proclamation he iseued in l»lb. ns Governor of Massachusetts.

^ a result, the White House. re- bonding to requests for an expression iron, the 1'resldent, sent copies of the proclamation to be read tonight at Lin iohrs Birthday meetings in various »ec- tions of the country ,.,

In his proclamation, Mr. CoolidBe

said : ,1,-* "Vive score and ten years ago, u\ni

all was poor and mean em e only u

ered her son with greatness.

Lincoln Personified Ideals

••There can be no observance ot a

, rong" but In compassion stronger, he a lead" of men by

follower of the ^^sence filled the

Sai»

bu't his spirit ;n«e».« YeJ Lc* of creasing years, the Itcnest

^ffiS^D, ^at the, worship ,,„, ,Lt are It is no accident that before the great example- of Amencan manhood, our people stand with resr eci 'Uerence. And in accordance with

country fulfilled."

Heck Sees Danger to Democracy N>w York, Feb. 12.— Although the ■Great War was fought to make the S3 safe for •^.^Jf^

be" in more serious than at anv time ''since tie days of

Krov^ro^thn.^

^^^^^

'"M^BSk*^ erred to what he de- scribed as the "mighty change which came over the world's dream of de- mocracy" after the World War. tw mentioned political changes in Russia China, Italy, Spain, Greece and Get many and . France Bnri.no, the mother of democracies," he saul, is Ambling., at possible , domination of

flnce the Civil War, and declared that "under this Republican Administration of Calvin Coolidge we are at the high point of our prosperity." The Demo- crats, he said, had been searching vainly for an issue for the approaching cam- paign. „

"I undertake to say that no Presi- dent that has ever occupied the White House has enjoyed the confidence of the whole American public to the same degree as has Calvin Coolidge. L\en Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland. Wilson had their enemies and de- tractors within their own parties. .No- where is there a voice raised against Coolidge."

a labor oligarcny. xms oiigarcnyi ne asserted, prefers to work its will by "direct action," which the "P*aker termed an euphonius term for poking the community into submission by a threat of starvation.

"No present fact is more significant than the reaction in many nations against democracy and in favor of one- man power," he said. "Jt matters not whether the one man be called » war, Emperor. King or Dlctator-the es- sential fact is his power Today half of the oldest nations of Europe are in the grasp of dictators. The revolt is not against democracy as a social ide-U but against the inefficiency and ve- nality of parliamentary institutions.

"Let no one In this country be blind to the fact that successful revolution in England through this power of dire.t action might have a significant reper- cussion in this country, ami might ' Se 8trov that 'Government of the people by the people and for the people of which Lincoln spoke."

9L

LEEP, little Abram, your eyelids are droopin'. Thar at the threshold a chipmunk comes snoopin'. Whippoorwill's tellin' thet winter is over. Sleep, little baby, for Mammy's your lover.

Jes one more young-un here beneath our thatch, ]es one more mouth — and the wild wolf at the latch! Cod make me stronger to care for my Abe; The pioneer's milestone 's the grave of a babe.

Sleep, Little Abram. Thar's childer I know Wrapped in soft flannels and pillered like snow. Your bed be corn husks, with b'arskin for cover; But God keeps ye snug, and Mammy's your lover.

Up, heart o' J^ancy! Despairin is sinnin. Strength, hands o' mine, fer your weavin and spinnin'. And oh, hotu I hone fer a white shift to bring him, And oh, fer more time jes to nuzzle and sing him !

Sleep, little Abram. The night owl is hootin'; Out on the mounting your daddy is shootin'. All the green hillside hez lost its snow cover- Spring's come, my bif -d, and Mammy's your lover.

.OTHERS CHARE IN LINCOLN'S FAME

New York times Magazine

.32 7

Abraham Z,incoi», whom the coun- try remembers each year on Feb. 12, the day of his birth in 1809, had two mothers whose influence on his early life is still a subject of study among historians and biographers. Nancy Hanks Lincoln died when Lincoln was 9 years old and she was only 35. Thomas Lincoln, his father, married the next year Sally Bush Johnston, a widow, of Elizabethtown, Ky. These two women are the subject of the following article. The writer, who is the author of "The Life of Abraham, Lincoln," concludes that "the world has 1 no reason to think meanly of Abraham Lincoln's father or of either of his two "mothers."

By WILLIAM E. BARTON

NANCY LINCOLN lifted her wan face from the hen- feather pillow and smiled a weary but thankful smile. Thomas Lincoln looked down at her with a look of sympathy, relief and pride. Peggy Walton, the granny- woman, herself in the early twen- ties, but already possessed of some experience in her art, said she had never seen a finer, healthier baby. Aunt Polly Friend, sister of Nancy's mother, agreed, and said that Tom and Nancy had wanted a boy to be- gin with, and now they had him, and there was Sarah besides. Aunt Betsy Sparrow, -whom Nancy called Ma, for this aunt had been her fos- ter mother, had been washing the baby and now brought him, attired in a yellow petticoat, and showed Mm. to his father. "Don't drop him, Tom," she said. Tom took him awkwardly and gave him his first paternal inspection. The baby was sound in wind and limb, as Tom was accustomed to say, for he had some skill with horses. There was nothing wrong with the baby. And he was a boy.

A name had been waiting for him for two years. It was the name of Thomas Lincoln's own father, the Virginia pioneer who had been shot by an Indian when Tom was a lad of 6. Tom had seen him killed and was still standing beside his dead body when a savage, approaching to scalp the dead man and kill the boy, fell, shot through the breast by Tom's eldest brother, Mordecal, who fired from the cabin near by.

The name Abraham did not fit the first baby, so Tom and Nancy called. bt'T garah, which was the next best

thing possible. But Abraham was appropriate as a name for the little red-faced thing that Tom now held awkwardly in his arms. They named him Abraham Lincoln.

Peggy Walton lived long after the j other three women were dead. She |, was living after Abraham Lincoln • was elected President. She was an J old woman then, more than 70 years \ of age, and had suffered a fracture of her hip that caused her to hobble about on a crutch. There was a neighborhood gathering one day be- tween Hodgenville and Buffalo, and the company assembled for their basket dinner at the Sinking Spring. That was the very spring from which the Lincoln family drew water when Abraham Lincoln was born. There was much comment on the fact that a lad born in the cabin that once had stood within biscuit-throw of where they were sitting should have become President of the United States. Aunt Peggy Walton was be- sieged with questions, for strange rumors were in circulation about the Lincolns.

Aunt Peggy Remembered

Aunt. Peggy remembered them well. She was young then and the incident was more clearly held in memory than many of the births of later years.

First, she denied emphatically that the Lincolns were a "no-account" family. They were poor, to be sure, but they were wholly respectable. It was Saturday when she was called. Tom had been in Elizabethtown atr tending com*t, but had returned home the latter part of the weekJ' Saturday, toward noon, he stopped a lad on his way to mill. Abe En- low was the boy's name, and he was still living and remembered the event very well. This lad Tom stopped and asked him to dismount. Tom helped him to lift down the sack of corn and asked him to ride over and fetch Peggy Walton, the granny- woman. Abe rode up to her fence and called out to her and she took her hands out' of the dish water and dried j them and got up behind the lad and rode over. J

It was early Sunday morning when | the baby came. Aunt Peggy did not i recall any unusual -details. Nancy ! had about as hard a time as women ! u.WiijFlu£<li harder "than tiome, not

so hard as others.

ond baby and everything went all right.

One thing, however, she did re- member, and some of the other wo- men present at the spring that day in 1861 had heard the same thing from their mothers and confirmed j Aunt Peggy Walton. Tom was j ) mighty kind to Nancy and seemed i i right anxious when she was a-suf- I fering, and both he and Nancy were : very happy that the baby was a boy. j

Hodgenville had not voted for Lin- ! coin as President and did not believe j in what he was supposed to repre- j sent in politics. But in the group I that assembled at the Sinking Spring ! that day in 1861, of whom a very \ few are still living, no one who had known them spoke ill of the Lin- colns.

"Aunt Peggy said Mis' Lincoln was a right fine woman and Tom Lincoln was good to her. And they sort of helt onto each other's hands a minute and smiled, for they was both proud that hit was a boy."

We need not draw too sombre a picture of the interior of the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. It was anything but palatial, but it was not destitute of a certain rude comfort. Nancy occupied a feather bed (chicken feathers, of course), and there were deer skins on the floor and homespun coverlets on the bed. The house contained quite as good an assortment of dishes and cutlery as the average home in the locality, a fact we know from the inventory of a sale when Tom Lin- coln purchased these articles a few months before Abraham was born. It was just an average home of a poor family.

Tom was proud of his boy. But Nancy understood him better than Tom. In some respects the lad de- veloped, as he grew, traits akin to those of his father. He had his father's coarse, brown-black hair

and shaggy eyebrows, his father's love of fun and skill in telling hu- morous stories. But Abraham's traits of mind were more like his mother's.

It has been common to attribute to Nancy Hanks Lincoln a very un- usual education for her time. She was probably better educated than j any other Hanks woman in her own j or of the next preceding generation. ] but her mother, Lucy Hanks, coulr read and write well and her spelling was not always incorrect. Nanev probably was a little better educate< than her husband; but he was abk to sign his name at an earlier date than , any historian has thus far stated. A surprising new record hat just been discovered, in which in- dubitable evidence emerges showing .that he bought land and held an of- fice before his marriage and in a county where he was not known to have resided. He signed his name, an excellent signature, several years before he met Nancy Hanks, whom some historians declare to have been his teacher. Nancy did not have much education, but she wanted hei son to have more than she had. There is no reason to suppose that Thomas Lincoln opposed his son's ambition to learn. But Nancy un- derstood him better than his father. She encouraged her son to read.

Thomas Lincoln had bought his farm at the Sinking Spring and lost it because the title of the man he bought it from was bad. This we have recently learned. Also he bought the farm to which the fam- ily moved on l£nob Creek, this re- moval occurring when Abraham was less than 3 years old. But, here again, he became involved in litiga- tion through a defective title of the man from whom, he bought the farm. Twice he had bought farms, made payments and had trouble over titles. In each case he could have stayed. The Sinking Spring farm he could

have redeemed for $75 and costs. The Knob Creek farm he could have held by adverse possession and the favoring judgment of local juries against absentee landlords. But he left both farms and when Abraham was 7 years of age the family re- moved to Indiana.

The removal occurred in the Au- tumn and. was probably not an ex- perience of hardship, but it was fol- lowed by "pretty .pinching times." The first Winter, that of 1810-17.. "eighteen - hundred - and - tiroitp - to - death," as it came to be called, was" spent in a shed. Before the next j Winter the family had a cabin.

There they lived in such comfort as belonged to the backwoods— *i family of four, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his wife, and their two children, Sarah and Abra- ham, born two years apart almost to a day, she on Feb. 10, 1807, and he on Feb. 12, 1809.

One Man-Child Left

There had been another boy, born ! I two years after Abraham. His name : v?as Thomas. He died before the family left Kentucky. Thomas missed his little namesake. Nancy hugged to her heart with more in- tense maternal affection her one re-| maining man-child, her only living son, Abraham Lincoln. That is the way with mothers. Thomas loved Abraham with an awkward and In- articulate affection, but Nancy loved her boy and knew how to make him understand that she did so. Mothers 1 are made that way.

She was a tall, slender, dark- skinned woman, a little sallow and inclined to stoop. She had a remark- \ ably high forehead, a fact remem- ' bered by every one of her relatives who has left a description of her. She impressed them all as highly in- tellectual and possessed of an un- usual education. She was ordinarily cheerful, but had times when her face was sad. She had had a child- hood not wholly unhappy, as we may well believe, but there was enough to make her serious and thoughtful.

She was born in what is now Min- eral County, West Virginia, on Mike's Run of Patterson Creek, on land that had first been surveyed by George Washington for Lord Fair- fax. The "Washington line" bounded one side of her grandfather's farm. The day and month of her birth is unknown, but the year was 1784, and the time was late Winter or very early Spring. Just after her birth her grandfather, Joseph Hanks, mortgaged his farm for a pittance to, a thrifty Pennsylvania German neighbor and never returned to re- deem it. The family moved into Kentucky. In time Nancy's mother, Lucy, the brightest and best edu- j cated of the family, married Henry j Sparrow, but Nancy did not live long with them. Lucy's sister, Betsy, married Henry's bro'her, Thomas Sparrow, and this couple had no children. Nancy: went to live with them, and! they became her foster par- ents. They sheltered her in girlhood, followed her to Indiana, died of the same sickness and are buried in the same enclosure with her. The neighbors who buried them never ' sus- pected untii 1S65 that Thomas and Betsy Sparrow were not Nancy Hanks Lincoln's real parents.

This was a situation that gave her some sorrow. But both families of .Sparrows did well. Henry and Lucy Sparrow had eight children, all of whom married, and they have probably 2,000. living descendants now, 1,000 of them living near their ancestral home in

Kentucky. And Thomas and Betsy Sparrow gave to Nancy advantages superior *o their own and brought her up in virtue and re- spect. No rumor in any way reflecting on the char- acter of Nancy Hanks ever ' originated among peopu who knew her. She was a good woman ■ and her children were born in law- ful wedlock.

She died, that dark- skinned, deep-eyed young woman, when only 35 years of age. She knew that she was dying, and, according to the testimony of a neigh- bor who was present, she called her two children, I charged them to be kind to each other and obedient to their father, to do good and love God and prepare to meet her in Heaven.

In his mature years Abraham Lincoln said of his mother that however unpromising- the condition's out of which she emerged, she was a woman of good j mind and strong judgment and was courageous, cool and conscientious. He be- lieved also that he inherited through her his power of analysis, his abilitysto rea- son and his clear judgment. It was probably of these inherited qualities he was speaking*! particularly, but not of these alone, i when he said, "God bless my mother; all that I am or hope to be I owe to her."

Whoever selected the burial place for the dead of the Little Pigeon set- tlement chose a lovely spot. There the State of Indiana worthily main- tains a beautiful park, named for her, the Nancy Hanks Park, and its central feature is her monument, a shrine in honor of pioneer mother- hood. There increasingly American people gather to pay tribute to the mother of Abraham Lincoln.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln died Oct. 5, 1818. Somewhat more than a year later, in December, 1819, Thomas Lincoln mounted his horse and rode back to Kentucky. He left his two children, Sarah and Abraham, in the cabin, but that did not matter. Sarah had been housekeeper since her mother's death, and Abraham was

Twc mothers 3

now a big- hoy of almost 11. Be- sides, Dennis Hanks was There. He was Nancy's cousin, son of her aunt Naney, the wife of Lievi Hall. The Halls had died with the Sparrows and with Mrs. Lincoln. Dennis was almost a man and the Lincoln cabin was now his only home.

Thomas Lincoln rode back to Eliza- bethtown where he and Nancy had lived just after their marriage and where Sarah was born. There he wooed the widow Sally Johnston, whose husband had' been jailer of Hardin County. He had died; leav- ing her with three children, two daughters, Elizabeth . and Matilda, and a son, John D. Johnston,

Thomas Lincoln's wooing is pre- served in tradition by. the Bush fam- ily, for Sally Johnston was a daugh- ter of Christopher Bush. He told her

that he was a widower and she a widow,- and each needed a mate. He offered her the best he had in the way of a home. She told him she was not in condition to marry and move away, for she had certain debts that shfe-Tvas unable to pay. He in- quired the names of the creditors and the amounts of the . debts and went out.

While he was gone, she summoned her brothers and told them the er- rand on which Thomas had come. They knew Thomas Lincoln well. One of her brothers had made a flatboat journey with him, and if there is anywhere that men learn to know each other it is on a long boat voyage. It is much to the credit of Thomas Lincoln that the brothers advised Sally to marry him.

Thomas returned about that time with Sally's bills receipted. Hard as had been the conditions of life in Indiana, Thomas Lincoln went

a-wooing with money in* his pocket. ■ He paid the debts which Sally's first |

husband had left her to take care of. j

-i

Thomas Lincoln was not a great j man, but Sally got a better husband j by her second marriage than by her j first.

Thomas Lincoln had ridden from | Indiana on one horse, and now he j needed three others, for the Widow j Johnston, who was now Mrs. Lin- coln, had remarkably good furniture for a woman so lacking in money. The furniture was piled into a bor- rowed wagon, and the three children climbed in with it. Tom and Sally sat in front, and they drove back to Indiana.

Sally Lincoln has been abundantly pitied because of her marriage to the J shiftless Tom Lincoln. She deserved ' rather to be" felicitated. She had

found a better husband than she had possessed before, and she had a home for her three children. However, it was a squalid cabin to which Tom Lincoln conducted her, and the chil- dren whom she found there were unkempt. She brought into requisi- tion a gourd of soft soap and a tub of water and ordered a ^general cleaning up. The house, also, she put in better order and caused a floor to be laid. The new furniture looked gorgeous in a cabin that had never seen the like. And the new family began to adjust itself to its new conditions.

Sally Lincoln had really to make one family out of the odds arid ends and leavings of four broken house- holds. There were her own three children and Thomas Lincoln's two, besides Dennis Hanks. And then there were the two orphaned Hall boys, .who were there much of the

time. It. was really almost a fron- tier orphan asylum. But she unified the life of that humble home and the' children all respected and obeyed her.

We hav*> a good description of Sally Lincoln. She was as tall as Nancy Hanks, but very straight. Her hair was black and curly, where- ' as that of Nancy Was without curl or wave. Her eyes were black, whereas Nancy's were gray. Sally was alert, vivacious and talkative. She was a proud woman, so her granddaughters said, and it is wholly reasonable. She was a good house- keeper and an excellent cook.

She was wholly illiterate. Her husband, Thomas, stumblingly read the Bible and was able to write his name. She could do neither. But 1

] she was pleased that Abraham wanted to learn. He liked to come home from work, the earlier the better, "for he was no hand to work | like killing snakes," and to find a ! pone of cornbread in the cupboard ! and a book tucked between the cabin logs. -With a chair laid face down- ward on the floor and his back stretched along its hypothenuse, he would consume the book and the bread in equal doses. His father sometimes was a little impatient about this, but his stepmother liked it. Her part in this proceeding was to see that the pone was ready in the cupboard and to refrain from scolding when Abraham sprawled across her floor iri his recumbent ac- quisition of knowledge.

Twice only after Abraham Lincoln was elected President did he leave Springfield before his journey to Washington, and one of these jour-

I neys was for a visit to his step- 1 mother in Coles County. '

It was more of a journey than is | at once apparent. It required a trij ; on two railroads each way, and a j i long, cold drive into the country, ten miles and back, over rough roads. ; It took two days. Lincoln spent the ! night in Charleston, where he had | had one of his debates with ; Douglas.

I ■„ ■ r&. . ■ ..

j It happens that no longer ago than

last Spring the present wnter had a first-hand account of one part of i that journey. It was the night of the 3d of May, and Uncle Joe Can- non was quietly preparing- for his birthday celebration. He had put away his big black cigars and was smoking mild 5-cent affairs. We talked of many thing's. Among the rest we talked of Lincoln, nor was that the only time.

"Tell me again, what was the last time you talked with Mr. Lincoln.?"

Uncle .Toe's memory had become treacherous. Kor a few moments he said he was not sure just which lime was the last. Then his memory came back, clear and distinct. He rode with Lincoln a part of the way on Lincoln's journey to see his stepmother.

"It was a beautiful thing that he took that cold jour- ney in dead of Winter *o ' see the woman who had been a mother to him," said Uncle Joe, and he choked . a little with emotion.

In 1865, soon after the death of Lincoln. William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, made a journey to her double log cabin and was much impressed by the character of Sally Lincoln. She told Herndon she loved her own son, John, hut not a bit more than she loved Abe. Indeed, she showed, ' in spite of her attempt at

impartiality, that she loi him even more than sn loved John.

"My mind, what little I had, seemed to be like his." she said.

Whether that was true or not, and she had a good mind, her sympathy and encouragement gave them companionship.

"I can say what not one mother in a thousand can say," she said, "Abe never gave me a cross word."

She told of his last visit, and her fearful foreboding that it was to be the last. Sincere and deep was her grief for him, her stepson dearer to her *han the chil- dren of her own flesh and blood.

Thomas Lincoln died in his home on Goose Nest Prairie Jan. 17, 1851. I have made careful search o f t h e newspapers to discover what notice, if any, was made of the| death of his widow, and I cannot find one printed line. With very great difficulty I have established the date Dec. 10, 1869.

Thomas Lincoln died respected by his neighbors. His widow, Abraham Lincoln's second mother, died, un- recognized by the public, but hon- ored and loved by those who knew her and honored by the great man who became her son. The grave of Thomas Lincoln was ! marked by a shaft that had become j badly chipped and battered. There • was no mark at the grave of Sally Lincoln. In 1!)24 a new and digni- fied monument was erected to mark both graves. The bodies lie side by side in Shiloh Cemetery, about a mile and a half from their home.

They were, humble and common- place, but they were honest, sober and God-fearing people. The world has no reason to think meanly of Abraham Lincoln's father or of either of his two mothers.

February 9, 1924

AMERICA

395

Lincoln's Mother

Paul L. Blakely, S.J. OD bless my mother ! All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to her."

What manner of woman was she of whom these words were spoken? A sufficient answer is that she was the mother of Abraham Lincoln. But what was her appear- ance, what her bearing? The descriptions left by those who knew her or who had lived with her neighbors are vivid. In her latest book, "In the Footsteps of the Lincolns," Miss Ida Tarbell writes that as a young woman Nancy Hanks was " vivacious, spirited, beautiful," well able to manage a horse, skilled in weaving, spinning, and all the household arts of the day. " She was a welcome guest wherever she went," writes Miss Tarbell, "in- dustrious, cheerful, competent." Ward Hill Lamon, quoted by Barton in his study, " The Paternity of Lin- coln," paints the following portrait:

Nancy Hanks . . . was a slender, symmetrical woman of medium stature with dark hair, regular features, and soft sparkling hazel eyes. Tenderly-bred, she might have been beautiful; but hard labor and hard usage bent her handsome form, and imparted an unnatural coarseness to her features long before the period of her death. Toward the close, her life and face were equally sad ; and the latter habitually wore the woeful expression which after- ward distinguished the countenance of her son in repose.

"Herndon's Lincoln," the so-called "suppressed bio- graphy," by Lincoln's law-partner, William H. Herndon, gives this picture of Nancy Hanks at the age of twenty- three :

She was above the ordinary height in stature, weighed about 130 pounds, was slenderly built, and had much the appearance of one inclined to consumption. Her skin was dark; hair dark brown; eyes gray and small ; forehead prominent ; face sharp and angular, with a marked expression of melancholy which fixed itself in the memory of everyone who ever saw or knew her. Though her life was seemingly beclouded by a spirit of sadness, she was in dis- position amiable and generally cheerful.

A manuscript written by Herndon some time between 1866 and 1871, but first published by Barton in 1920, con- tains this character-sketch :

Nancy Hanks Lincoln was a woman of very fine cast of mind, an excellent heart, quick in sympathy, a natural lady, a good neigh- bor, a firm friend. ... She was very sensitive, and sometimes gloomy.

" Not very much of a talker," wrote her cousin, John Hanks, to Jesse Weik, in 1887, " very religious and her disposition very quiet."

In the Autumn of 1816, Thomas Lincoln migrated with Nancy and the two children, Sarah and Abraham, from Kentucky to Indiana. Two years later, on October 5, 1818, this gentle lady in whose heart was " love like deep waters, and brave desire," sank under the hardships of a pioneer life, old before her thirty-fifth year. The story is often told that when dying Nancy Hanks called her son, a frightened, ragged, forlorn little boy not yet ten years' old, and bade him love his people and serve God. I do not know that the story is true. Whether it is true or not,

makes little difference, because that was the lesson which Nancy Hanks taught her children every day of her life. But I cannot resist telling the story again in the words of the saturnine, embittered Herndon.

" She struggled on, day by day," says one of the household, " a good Christian woman, and died on the. seventh day after she was taken sick. Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the little jobs and errands required of them. There was no physician nearer than thirty-five miles. The mother knew that she was going to die, and called the children to her bedside. She was very weak, and the children leaned over while she gave her last message. Placing her feeble hand on little Abe's head, she told him to be good and kind to his father and sister ; to both she said : ' Be good and kind to one another,' expressing the hope that they might live as they had been taught by her, to love their kindred and worship God." Amid the miserable surroundings of a home in the wilderness Nancy Hanks passed across the dark river. Though of lowly birth, the victim of poverty and hard usage, she takes a place in history as the mother of a son who liberated a race of men. j . . . She had done her work in this world.

When the dreaded "milk-sickness" broke out in the settlement in 1818, Nancy Hanks had gone from house to house, helping as best she could to take care of the suffer- ers. The children of more than one early settler lived to tell of her generous charity. Already worn out, she fell a victim to the disease. To the little Abraham, sensitive, thoughtful, affectionate, the blow was dreadful, and I am inclined to agree with Miss Tarbell that at this time " the deep melancholy of his nature was first stirred into life."

They laid her in a beautiful spot. Perhaps half a mile from their cabin was a knoll, heavily wooded, uncleared, where, prob- ably, a grave or two had been dug. It was October, and the woods were in full color, red, yellow, brown. Let us hope it was a sunny day, for the heart-broken little family had little or nothing of that which they felt was due to the dead to comfort them, no burial service, no sympathetic neighbors. They were alone and forlorn in a stricken land. ("In the Footsteps of the Lincolns," p. 125.)

Even when judged by the rude standards of those Spartan days, the poverty of the Lincoln home was pitiable. In after years Lincoln could not think of it without pain. For at least some months after their com- ing, their dwelling was a small cabin on the edge of the clearing. The door was an opening cut in the logs; the windows too were open; the floor was the bare ground. Miss Tarbell is at pains to show, however, that Lincoln's Indiana home was not "sordid." That is true. No place where Nancy Hanks was could be sordid. More: be it only a wretched hovel into which the chill rain and the snows are swept by the wind, no home can be sordid if in it there is a mother like Nancy Hanks. A mother may be in rags; as Nancy Hanks in 1818, she may be "thin, stoop-shouldered, sad." But her lips tell of goodness and peace. Through her eyes her little children look into Heaven. Her hand worn and knotted by toil points the way.

Five years ago, I climbed the knoll to seek the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. My mind went back to the boy who that his mother might receive her poor meed of honor, the best he could give her, walked across the country to

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MONDA/, MAY 5, 1930. ~ I

■tteir

MOST BEAUTIFUL MOTHER

What a task faces the judges who are (o determine America's most beautiful mother. More than 100,- 000 photographs will be assembled in Cleveland from which to select the winner. But how futile the search through the mass of pictures and probably how far from the real first mother when the quest is end- ed.

For America's most beautiful

again it sets toward the criminal purpose of death in the accepted mode of national honor.

Mother's beauty is individual. Her face may be wrinkled and hands gnarled from toil. She may possess few of the world's demands i for beauty but within such heart of i surpassing kindness and unselfish- ness beyond words that she shames the clear-lined beauty whose charac- ter is not so apparent. | \ To glimpse the beauty of Mother repair to a rural burying ground in 'Southern Indiana where Nancy (Hanks sleeps. Perhaps the mother jpf Lincoln would be spurned by the V omen-admirers of today but there Mtes such beauty within that Iter ratliant face shines down the years to be glorified beside the memory offher martyred son.

When James A. Garfield was in augurated president his mother was there, a plain country woman with- out adorning garb, and the nation' first citizen stilled the applause- mad crowd by turning to I he veuer able woman with such tender trib ute that he rebuked the servile throng about him.

Kentucky's first citizen acclaims a woman near a century as the

mother is not necessarily the wo-, most beautiful mother in the state man whose likeness is most aliur-l

ing to the eye of artist. It may be some mother of uncharming face to the stranger, one whose features do not attract the superficial observer, for beauty is more than skin deep and the winner of this nation-wide contest will be hardly expected to represent the ideal sought for.

American mothers form the strongest force on the continent. Gentle women who preferred to live for their families throttled the darkest infamy — the liquor traffic — in its lair and turned the full light of day upon ils nefarious activities, until an aroused nation tore the running sore from the place long oc- cupied. And when modification of the Eighteenth amendment is sug- gested the formidable bulwark of women interposes to balk nullifiers, turning their prayer-inspired faces toward a foe that cares naught to web those held most dear.

American mothers were the great- est sufferers in the World war. Children of their womb were torn ruthlessly from loving arms to be sacrificed upon the altar of Mars and in the tumultuous hour of vic- tory glad mothers must have smiled through welling 1 rears of anguish,, for the ways of war plotters are past their understanding, and those who would have peace sincerely be- lieve the combined force of women voters will stem the tide whenever

and when Governor Sampson was inaugurated in December 1927 his S3 year old mother held the place of honor. To him this mountain woman who never knew the graces of society and who reared her sou to. a noble manhood that found a state calling him to rule was more beautiful than the most gorgeously costumed watcher of the inaugural ceremonies.

Again we say what a task faces the searchers after America's most beautiful mother and how far from tbe real queen will the quest lead.

and We

Lincoln Owed Greatness to His

'Angel Mother' Rev. Howard Says

Sermon Devoted to Life of Emancipator— Rev. Mr. Grant Assails Excessive Leniency for Criminals — Asserts ' Only Safe And Sure Deterrent Is Capital Punishment.'

High tribute was paid to the life and achievements of Abraham Lincoln in a sermon on "Lessons From the Life of Lincoln," given by Rev. W. S. Howard, rector of Christ Episcopal church, Fourth and Franklin streets, Sunday morning.

The Lincoln anniversary service was combined with the observance of the twelfth anniversary of the founding of the Boy Scouts of Amer- ica and the three scout troopa of the church attended in a body and in the service pledged allegiance to the flag and took the scout oath.

Rev. Mr. Howard outlined the early life of the great emancipator and as- serted that the biggest influence in the youth of the great man was that of a good mother.

"All that I am and all that I ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother," Rev. Mr. Howard quoted Lincoln.

Poverty Termed Blessing.

"The poverty of Lincoln's youth," Rev. Mr. Howard stated, "was more of a blessing than a handicap, • for it brought him to manhood with a se- rious view of life and a capacity for work that made him successful. And although he had only one year of regular schoolj his thirst for knowl- edge and his intense reading of the Bible and other good books engen- dered in him a splendid capacity for self-expression that he utilized to great advantage in his career as a statesman.

"Lincoln was a man of great physique and wonderful strength, but greater than these attributes were his kindness of heart and his great mindednesa.

"And the destiny of a nation was affected by an incident in the life of a youth when Lincoln, working on a fiatboat, floated down the river to New Orleans and there saw a young colored girl sold on the auction block. He then told his companions that some day he would strike a blow at the system under which such things could he.

Almighty Power Sought.

"Lincoln freely acknowledged his dependence on God," Rev. Mr. How- ard said in conclusion, "and when he was first called to serve hi3 country declared that he could carry the bur- den only through dependence on the Almighty Power that, has supported Washington when the nation was in tho making."

Rev. Mr. Cross declared that the greatest charm in the work was the ielineation of the central character, the founder of the family, who is presented with a vigor and simplicity that brings to mind some of the pa- triarchs of the Bible. He stated that the philosophy of the book is that, in the last analysis, we get all we have from the soil.

"The book," the Rev. Mr. Cross said, "makes a strong appeal to the innate love of nature in every man and woman. It is the story of a strong man, not particularly high in the scale of human intelligence, who wanders beyond the outposts of cul- tivation and establishes himself on the land. It is a history of his mating, the growth of his family anjd the development of the land.

"The book carries the message that Man is the victim of civilization, that the growing tendency to congregate

in congested cities is unnatural enervating, lowering ideals, must maintain some contact with the soil to preserve our balance and our ability to progress.

"I do not advocate by any means any general back-to-the-land move- ment, but we must cultivate a love of the simple and natural vigur and freshness that comes from direct contact with the soil and elemental truths."

Speaking before the afternoon serv- ice at the Y. -M. C. A., Rev. J. F. Bowes, pastor of the Central Park Methodist Episcopal church, asserted humanity is living in a new day and that new social conditions demand new adjustments.

"The whole world now is playing in one yard," Rev. Bowes said. "No two peoples are separated from each other by any considerable distances measured in units of time, for our messages now exceed the speed of the sun around the earth. As far as communication of ideas is concerned, two men! living twenty-five miles apart a century ago were more sepa- rated than we now are from China.

"This means we have to learn to live together as never before, and must learn that this new life must be based on a mutual understanding and love, fellowship and a faith in humanity."

Leniency Is Assailed.

Rev. Charles L. Grant, pastor of the Faith Lutheran church, Charle3 and Mackubin streets, in his morning sermon, attacked excessive leniency to criminals in a sermon, "Shall We Erect Monuments to Murderers in Minnesota?"

"Instead of pitying and champion- ing the cause of perverts who in their right mind murder, they should be treated as God clearly enjoins," Rev. Mr. Grant said. "They have no right to live. They make life abso- lutely unsafe for the whole communi- ty. No one knows who may be next. It is our duty to seek the good of the many law-abiding citizens. Societies for the promotion of more murder di- rect their sympathies toward the few who know no law but their own angry passions.

"Instead of making the community safe by meting out capital punish- ment to murderers, many sentimental- ists would put up beautiful monu- ments to the memory of the valiant heroes who take away the bread win- ners in homes and charitably make women widows. Shouldn't we cease now in Minnesota to show mercy to the criminal who takes life and show a little more mercy to the upright members of the commonwealth who must live in constant fear of being deprived of life?

"It is the solemn duty of every christian to use every opportunity to raise up his voice against a system which puts a premium on murder. The only safe and sure deterrent is capital punishment. Let us prevent many murders by heeding the Bible injunction regarding the shedding of man's blood."

"Growth of Soil" Topic.

"The Growth of the Soil" by Knut Ilamsen, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, was reviewed by Rev. E. M. Cross, rector of St. John's church, in his evening sermon.

I

Nancy Hanks

1784-1818

by ROSEMARY CARR BENET

If Nancy Hanks Came back as a ghost, Seeking news Of what she loved most, She'd ask first "Where's my son? What's happened to Abe? What's he done?

"Poor little Abe, Left all alone Except for Tom, Who's a rolling stone; He was only nine The year I died. I remember still How hard he cried.

FiS'xi/il ?°ok A""'lcans by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Bendt Hnit Rinphart ™±l?s}™- i11^ Copyright 1933 by Rosemary and Stephen vincVn, Ben"r'CopyS

renewed 1961 by Rosemary Carr BeniH.

"Scraping along In a little shack, With hardly a shirt To cover his back, And a prairie wind To blow him down, Or pinching times If he went to town.

"You wouldn't know About my son? Did he grow tall? Did he have fun? Did he learn to read? Did he get to town? Do you know his name? Did he get on?"

155

Memory of Nancy Hanks Is Kept Green on Birth Anniversary of Her Son

By Associated Press

Lincoln City, Ind., Feb. 12 — Descendants of neighbors of the Thomas Lincoln family, who lived in a crude cabin here a century and a quarter ago, gathered today on Lincoln City's highest hilltop to honor the memory of the mother whom Abraham Lincoln, as a bov of 9, helped to bury.

Each year on his birthday while the rest of the Nation is honoring his memory, Southern Indiana pays tribute at the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died in 1818 | two years after coming with her husband and two children from Kentucky to make a new home in the wilderness.

Wreaths Placed

And so today from the country - .a"d "^boring towns came the faithful to place wreaths on the grave of Nancy Hanks Lin- coln, just across a valley from the log cabin in which the Civil War President as a boy, and hear Ivor ' "obinson, superintendent of the

Pay

Boonville public schools tribute to her memory, f Ihe ,b°y Lincoln helped his a h" ffushl°" the rough coffin in which they buried his mother. Foi the grave they chose the high- est^spot in w*at is now Lincoln

wi^T ^?aiS ag0 the «rave site,1 was hardly more than a briar patch. Then the state took it over1 and made it and the old Lincoln farm into the Nancy Hanks Lin- coln Memorial Park. Lincoln's only sister, Sarah Lincoln Grigsby who died in 1828, also is buried in the park.

In November, 1819, Thomas Lincoln remarried, bringing Sarah Bush from Kentucky to be a step- mother to "Abe" and Sarah.

Historians say Lincoln's step- mother had much to do with shap-

~f J that ma"y times she refused to let Thomas send him to

hi tvl T uhiS StUdles on the floor by the light of the blazing logs in the fireplace.

Lincolnia

NANCY HANKS LINCOLN

Prepared by the Golden Rule Moth- ers' Day Committe, Mrs. James Roosevelt, honorary chairman.

A little girl, reared in poverty in the backwoods of Virginia, /destined for a brief and none too happy life, was to grow up and beair a child whose career more than fulfilled hev highest Idreams of him.

Born at Patterson's Creek, Va., in 1784', Nancy Hanks went at the age of twelve to iive with her aunt and uncle, Tjhomas. and Elizabeth Spar- row, in Mercer county, Virginia. She had a chance to attend school there, and mD\de the most of it. In a com- munity where many of the men could neither read nor write, she learned to do both.

She was skillald at needle work, too, and hired out to families in the neighborhood. Though she worked for wages she never was regardid as a servant, but sat at the table with the household wherever she went. Report says she was tall and handsome, with a frank, open con- sonance and a voice pleasing both whe she sane? anjd when she talked.

A young apprentice named Thomas Lincoln was learning the tracU of carpentry in the shop of Joseph Hanks, uncle of Nancy. The two young people were attracted to each oth <r, and were married on June 12, 1S06. Thomas took his b-rVie home to a tiny house fourteen feet square.

He could not write his own name tntil the ambitious Nancy taught him how. But his ambition could not keep pace wth hers. Her d'sap- pftintment at his easy going ways was forgotten in her children; first, a little girl, Sarah: then, in 1809, the son known to histriry as Abra- ham Lincoln.

Between this child an'd this back- woods mother there was a, powerful bond 0f sympathy. They understood ■5ach other without wortfs. Perhaps she felt in him her own fierce huneer for learning-, for a larger, richer world.

"Abe's mind and mine, what little I have, seem to run toother," she is leported to have said once.

She was thirty-four years olid, and Abraham Lincoln was nine when she fell ill of an epidemic disease known in southern Indiana (to which the family had migrated) as the "milk sieknesis." In seven days she was dead.

Abraham helped his father to make her coffin out of green lumber cut with a whipsaw, helped to bury her in a forest clearing. There was no ceremony. This troubled the boy until, several months later, they se- cured a wandering preacher to de- liver a funeral sermon over the lonely grave.

His mother's influence stayed with him always, and was voiced in that most famous of filial epitaphs: "All that I am or hope t0 be, I owe to my angel mother."— Indianapolis News, May 2, 1935.

Spencer County Traldition. In tradition, Mrs. Lincoln is de- scribed as small in size, height about five feet and three or four inches, weight about 120 pounds, idark hair, blue eyes, well proportioned figure, pleasing features, well cultured for ege, a good business manager, sweet deposition, kiryd and friendly, good words for every one, high ideals in morals and religion: just such a per- son whose death casts a gloom over the entire community. — From "Sar^dy Creek Landing Greets the Lincolns," n The Monitor, February 12, 1931.

Such is the word -photo collected by the editor from descendants of fome of the neighbors of the Lincolns in Indiana; and it agrees with such documentary as the editor has found fince the above was published. Sandy Creek Landing is an early name for 1he present site of Grandview, the ferriage point for the Lincoln cara- van, when Mrs. Lincoln came to In- diana.— Editor.

Vincennes Takes Part in Tribute to Nancy Hanks Lincoln

*

*. £ ».

Curtis Shake Represents State As Kentucky Dedicates Marker at New Shrine

BY THE RAMBLER

Nancy Hanks, a brown haired pretty girl in her teens, wearing a calico dress and a white bon- net, joined hands with a tall young man and plighted their troth before a simple marker Wednesday afternoon deep down in Kentucky, as Washington county of the once dark and bloody ground turned back the pages of time to re-enact the marriage of the parents of Abraham Lincoln 129 years ago.

The program was a success even if it rained, if it poured. It was a success even if the great states of Indiana and Illinois had to crawl under the floor of a roofless grand- stand to seek shelter. And that was what Curtis Shake, who repre- sented Governor Paul McNutt and Paul M. Angle, of Springfield, 111., representative of Governor Henry Horner, had to do. For this cere- mony was held in the new Lincoln homestead, graced by only two buildings a replica of the small log cabin where Nancy Hanks and Tom Hf " i wer© married and a rustic

club house both far too' meager to shelter the throng of Washington county citizens who had braved a five mile slushy slippery, one way dirt road to attend the ceremonies.

It was Governor Ruby Laffoon of Kentucky who saved the day. Like that old king of early English history who commanded the tides to be still or something and got his feet wet for his pains, Governor Laffoon issued an executive order, commanding the sun to shine in five minutes. And believe it or not, the sun had a heart and- it did chase away the rain drops. And the program went on. And Brother Shake emerged from his cramped refuge and delivered one of the finest talks on Lincoln he has ever given.

* * *

We dipped deep into Lincoln his- tory on that trip; over th^ Lincoln Memorial Highway to Nancy Hanks Memorial Park where the mother of the great President sleeps. It had been nearly five years

entrance has been built there since we were there and what an effective and appropriate entrance it is; that wide green with the terrace beyond, flanked by paths on each side. The wording of the tablet written by Col. Richard! Lieber pays heart touching tribute to the wom- an "who led Abraham Lincoln a little while on the path to great- ness."

The elaborate headstone is gone and it is fitting. Her grave is un- pretentious, the marker similar to that of the other pioneers who1 lived and died in that once wilder- ness.

* * *

Thence, following the route into little Santa Claus where we met the new postmaster and the new Santa Claus in that old fashioned general store that carries you to the days of way back when. That registry book too gives you an insight of the pos- sibilities of tourist traffic. All states were in that registry.

It's a winding, twisting road that

since we had been there. The new , takes you eventually to Cannelton,

the terminus of the Indiana Lin- coln Highway. The scenery, in the fresh new green of June, was at its best. A ferry took us over the broad Ohio, yellow with flood, into old Kaintuck. If you haven't made this trip, gas up the old buggy this very Week-end. You'll not regret it.

Followed the old Ohio with breath taking glimpses of beauty from the high road and eventually to Hod- ginville. It was a long roundabout route. There is a new highway be- ing built that goes more direct to Elizabethtown, but it was freshly graded. And the filling station man advised us against it.

There have been tremendous changes at Hodginville where the Lincoln cabin is enshrined. And the beautification is only beginning. Hundreds of trees are being trans- planted there by CCC workers. Gradually they are restoring the scene to that of one approaching the primeval of Lincoln's babyhood.

And then the winding, twisting

(Continued on Page Three)

road where the scenery is so superb we won't even ask the old type- writer to describe it, to Springfield; Ky., where every lawyer is called judge.

* « *

It was a big day in Springfield. A holiday had been proclaimed.

There we ran into one Harry Lowe, who sells chemicals to jails, and who collects political cards as a hobby. Learning we were from Vincennes he pulled out a big pack from his pocket, shuffled them and produced none othars than those of Sheriff c. A. Joice and County Sur- veyor Bob Lind.

We awaited in town some time for his honor, the Governor of Ken- tucky, to arrive. He was delayed and finally fearing we might miss the show, we headed the bus for the Homestead park, some ten miles from town. A fine highway takes you within five miles but the last five miles made one wish for a horse and buggy. Past old Kentucky homesteads of colonial architecture fairly dripping with romance. Every now and then we'd meet a car from the other direction. One had to be a mud boat pilot for sure to negotiate the passing.

Then into the Homestead park, eav with the townspeople, pretty

young girls in old time costumes and elaborate bouquets of wild flowers. State troopers were there and national guardsmen. It was then we appreciated having the siate of Indiana along with us. We had to but suggest that we had Governor McNutt by proxy with us I and the state troopers rushed to ' lower the barriers and a trooper on horseback escorted us to the finest parking spot in the whole place.

We got there just as they were holding the flag raising exercises. Old Glory swinging to the breeze from a rustic flag pole over a mod- est plaza where the marker told the legend of the marriage of Nancy Hanks and Tom Lincoln.

The wedding pageant followed. Washington county did itself proud. The girl selected for Nancy Hanks was true to type, winsome and modest and the young man who stood beside her had a bit of Lin- coln in his broad shoulders, his | black hair, his strong features. And I the minister who took the role of that pioneer Methodist Jesse Head J who married the Lincolns, even I looked like the pictures of that old pjoneer as he read the actual mar- riage service used that long ago day.

Among the bride's attendants i were Miss Alice A. Baylor, of Speed, Ind., a senior at Indiana university, who was Miss Indiana, Miss Mary

Ann Martin of Salem, 111., who was Miss Illinois and Miss Clarice Nichols of Danville, who was Miss Kentucky. They wore elaborate white dresses of the early day style.

There were flower girls dressed in white lawn dresses; pioneer lads, Virginia maids and the friends of the bride, all dressed in the cos- tumes of long ago. There under a blue sky, then with no hint of the rain that was to come, the cere- mony was a beautiful and a touch- ling one. Out there in a lonely country side, the only touch of 1935 was in the rows of automobiles and the straw hats and the white shoes which were so brave in the mud.

In the afternoon the speaking program followed with Governor Laffoon the first. Then Shake fol- lowed.

He told that crowd of Kentucki- ans that although that state had given Lincoln to the world, the sis- ter states of Indiana and Illinois shared the credit of being his guardian.

He sketched Lincoln's career in Indiana, how he came here a boy, how he left as a man.

"Indiana claims to have done well by Lincoln," he said. He told how Lincoln spent his adolescent years jnly a few miles from Corydon, the

capital of Indiana, fifty miles from

| old Vincennes; that he was on the highway to New Harmony where the culture of the western world was centered. He paid tribute to the old Western Sun, the predeces- sor of the Vincennes Sun-Commer- !cial, which Lincoln read as a youth and which gave him his first news of world wide affairs.

Shake complimented the Washing- ton Historical Society which spon- sored the event, declaring that such commemorations guarantee the per- petuity of our country.

Mr. Angle, who represented Illi- nois followed with Former Governor Morrow of Kentucky as the final speaker. What a word painter this Governor Morrow is. He paid a beautiful tribute to Nancy Hanks, who gave the South its fiercest memory and the nation its tender - est.

First he pictured a royal wedding with all its fanfare and pomp, a wedding that was to produce a king who ruled by "divine right." Then he contrasted the simplicity of the marriage in the wilderness which was to produce not a man to rule by right of blood, but with the con- sent of the governed.

He eulogized Nancy Hanks as the ' pioneer mother who there alone in I

the wilderness brought fjrfch the baby Lincoln, cradled him in the hollow of her arm, crooned lulla- byes to him and so inspired him to pay that matchless tribute to her; "All that I am and all that I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

He pictured Lincoln as the great humanitarian yet who could be as firm in great crises.

"Lincoln," he said, "was a kindly jj as a wayside well, as gentle as the | rains upon the corn, but when it i came to preserving the Union, with slavery or without sla-ery, he was ' as sturdy as the yon towering oaks. He held up the roof beam and saved the American home."

Following the speaking, the tablet was unveiled in memory of Nancy Hanks, placed in a 30 foot square flagstone court made of native limestone with stone steps leading j to the enclosure in the center of ' which was the flag pole, set in boulders.

The day's program was concluded with a dance and "in fare" similar to that held in the Berry home given for Tom and Nancy after their marriage.

Yessir, it was a grand day — one long to be remembered. We think we'll have to go next year when they observe the anniversary again.

JULY, 1935

Mid-West Story Magazine

Nanev H

PAGE TWENTY-THREE

incoln

A Beautiful Poetic Tribute From The Poet Laureate of Natioual War Mothers to One of the Greatest Mothers in History, Herself Enduring the Heartaches of all Mothers.

(Dedicated to the Boonville Press Club)

A woman pioneer, heroic through great sacrifice,

No splendid pomp or royal robe were of her life a part.

I D»Tie, a crude log hewn cabin in an unchartered land,

But golden grandeur lay deeply cloist- ered in her heart;

A labor tired soul, submerged by

3imple homely things. With fortitude she met privations that

obscured her way; Patiently she kept bright embers of

motherhood aglow When mystic shadows caught and

blurred the hut at end of day.

She was endowed with rare intelli- gence of humanity;

Beneath a home spun dress there pulsed an innate understanding.

The universe still feels, that force of her ageless power.

Influence of her brief life will always be commanding.

1 Oh mother of Lincoln, revered by all.

hj Blanche Hammond Camp

Unknowingly she cradled a nation's

fate close in her arms And left to us a priceless legacy — the

son she bore. Undaunted he, the Wayfinder, kept

faith and nobly built A foundation for freedom that will

last forever more. Through primal days, crucial years of

war and tragedy, Her spirit, radiant with measureless

im/menslty, Inspired and guided this courageous,

fearless man With love of country moulded into

divine intensity. Only the wind's poignant eloquence

was her funeral dirge. Sequestered in a quiet world, cloak&d

with exquisite jade, Upon a hallowed knoll there stands

her consecrated shrine, Where choiring birds rehearse at

dawn an anthem unafraid. Here, protected by fragrant spruce

and tall cathedral trees, One can conjure the lonely hour when

on this sacred sod' A man, athirst for childhood's scenes,

returned to humfbly pray, And his great soul was lifted with an urgent sense of God.

Oh mother of Lincoln, revered by all.

A web of stars enfolds the earth with

mellow candleshine, That weaves a magic spell above her

thrice blest mortal dust. Etching nature's magnificient pattern

of Deity.

Indiana will proudly guard and keep this sacred trust.

Let us turn back a seared and yel- lowed page of history,

When all the country mourned th» 'hour of Lincoln's martyrdom,

And vision this loyal mother at Eter- nity's gate

Exalted, triumphantly waiting for his soul to come.

Dare we, the people of today, forget to

honor her Who had the wisdom of sages without

the world's acclaim? It was not ohance that she gave life to

this leader of men, But Destiny building cornerstones for

the Hall of Fame. We will raise high for her the torch

of truth and loyalty. Our hearts remembering will cherish

this great open space Where mortals stand In humbleness

as at an altar rail This spot that holds at eve the hush

of God upon Us face.

Oh mother of Lincoln, revered by all.

3

SET YOUR CALENDAR FOR

TO BE AT

BRIDGEPORT, ILLINOIS

Pi3; *-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN paid tribute to his mother in words that have become immortal: "All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe ,/\V*^ to my mother."

''^t/^fe- Yet who was this mother of Lincoln? It is a strange commentary on our manners and morals that only now is her true story coming to light. She had beer, dead for more than a century before historians generally agreed as to who she really was. Not until I92g was her exact birthplace finally located.

The reason for this obscurity is the ancient one that Nancy Hanks Lincoln was a child born out of wedlock. Historians, whether out of ignorance, or mistaken kind- ness, or sheer prudery, have tended to gloss over her origin. In so doing they have obscured a life of singular steadfastness and courage, a life that moved this wom- an's son — more great-souled than those who came after him — to a tribute that will live as long as the memory of him endures.

The full story of Nancy Hanks Lincoln is told here for the first time in print, so far as is known. Her life span was brief — a scant thirty-five years from the time she first saw sunlight on the hills of western Virginia until she died of the "milk-sick" on a bleak Indiana prairie. She came into this world unwanted, and her days vere filled with hardship and toil. When at last, grown weary before her time, her body was returned to ihe soil from whence it sprang, she was denied even an inkling of the destiny ti.at awaited her nine-year-old son. It was enough that she was his mother.

To get her complete story, one must go back to her own mother, Lucy Hanks. The tone lightens now as we move to the great estates of Tidewater Virginia in the exciting days following the Revolutionary War. Lucy Hanks was just sixteen in that bright October of 1 781 when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The celebration was tremendous. Victorious Ameri- can soldiers; handsome French officers who came over with that "madcap boy," the Marquis de Lafayette; sturdy British captains who had small stomach tor fighting their own race anyway — all these wanted to forget the long strain of war, to relax, and celebrate. The days and nights were filled with sports, dancing, gaming, feasting, drinking and lovemaking. Despite the shocked protests of staid elders, there occurred a "post-war jazz age," similar to that of our own time, following the World War.

Lucy's father, Joseph Hanks, was of the old school. He was a small farmer, a landowner, a member of the Established Church, and although he was of compara- tively humble origin, he had married a daughter of the

neighboring great house of Lee. He had a large family, five sons and four daughters, and he had shepherded them through the dangers and uncertainties of war times. He was filled with misgivings now. The bois- terous atmosphere of Tidewater Virginia was no fit environment in which to bring up growing children. He sold his farm, moved with his family westward into the wilderness.

The site of the Hanks homestead lies in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia, about fourteen miles southeast of the county seat at Keyser. There a mon- ument of native limestone, erected in 1933, marks the spot where the mother of Abraham Lincoln was born.

In Joseph Hanks' day this quiet hillside was far re- moved from the excitements of Old Virginia's coastal civilization. Here he thought his children would be safe — particularly his pretty, high-spirited, eldest daughter Lucy. In this he was mistaken.

There has been endless speculation, but not a single item of proven fact, on the vexing question of who was the father of Lucy's child. The best testimony we have comes from Lincoln himself. William H. Hern- don, Lincoln's law partner in the Illinois days and the first and most unsparing in the great line of Lincoln's biographers, gives the only recorded reference that Lincoln ever made to the subject. This occurred one day in 1S50 as the two law partners, traveling along a rutty country road by horse and buggy, were on their way to the Menard County couu lu tr> a. cuac involving paternity. Herndon thus describes the incident:

During the ride he (Lincoln) spoke for the first time in my hearing of his mother, dwelling upon her characteristics, and mentioning and enumerating what qualities he had in- herited from her. He said among other things that she was the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter; and he argued that from this last source came his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family. His theory in discussing the matter of hereditary traits had been, that for certain reab^iis illegitimate chil- dren are often sturdier and brighter than those born in wedlock; and in his case he believed that his better nature and finer qualities came from this broad-minded, unknown Virginian.

The revelation — painful as it was — called up recollections of his mother, and, as the buggy jolted over the road he added ruefully, "God bless my mother; all that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to her," and immediately lapsed into silence.

That phrase of Lincoln's, "a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter," is the sole clue we have to the identity of his grandfather. His reverent feeling both for his

mother and this unknown grandfather is evident. Indeed, although it is impossible for us to know the name of that long-ago admirer of Lucy Hanks, we can deduce that their romance must have had something of beauty and of restraint. There was no recrimination, no lawsuit, no forced marriage. Lucy Hanks met the man she loved, and of their love a child was born. That child was destined to become the mother of a President of the United States.

The child was christened Nancy, and perforce she had to take her mother's last name, Hanks. This was in the fall of 1783, and in the spring of the following year, Joseph Hanks, heavy-hearted, mortgaged his farm and once more started westward with his family. They went up over the Alleghenies, crossed the rugged hills and valleys of what is now West Virginia, and set- tled eventually in the hills of Kentucky.

Here Lucy Hanks began a new life. Repenting her misstep, she married an honest, upstanding ex-soldier of the Revolutionary War, Henry Sparrow.

Meanwhile little Nancy, the child of that first, youth- ful love, was being brought up by the grandmother. When the grandmother died, Nancy was given back to her own mother. To avoid embarrassment, she was called by the same name as the other children in the household and was known as Nancy Sparrow. Later, Lucy's youngest sister Betsy married Thomas Sparrow, a brother of Lucy's husband. When that marriage proved childless, Nancy was given to Thomas and Betsy to bring up. Thus, doubly, she became known as Nancy Sparrow.

It was as Nancy Sparrow that she met and fell in love with an amiable, barr ' diested carpenter, horse- trader and sometime li< dealer, Tom Lincoln by name. He was known in the community as a shiftless soul, but he had soft eyes and a beguiling smile, and poor Nancy, eager for a home of her own, no matter how humble, pledged him her heart and her hand.

The wedding of Nancy Sparrow and Tom Lincoln was a big event in the backwoods community. The foster- parents gave her in marriage, and her own mother ap- peared at the wedding as her aunt. But it is an example of Nancy's innate honesty that she insisted that the marriage bond — still preserved in Kentucky — be signed with her rightful name of Nancy Hanks. It is this con- fusion about her name, incidentally, that has led so many historians astray, has caused so many incorrect, fantastic guesses about her identity.

The one-room house in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to which Tom Lincoln took Nancy Hanks as a bride was the best she was ever to know. A later owner used it as a stable. It was here that her (Turn to page 51)

NEW FACTS ABOUT NANCY HANKS, A LOVE-CHILD OF POST-WAR DAYS, WHO BECAME THE MOTHER OF LINCOL]

4

Foster-parents gave Nancy, as a bride, to amiable Tom Lincoln. Her real mother, Lucy Hanks, ivas present as an aunt

(Continued from page 25)

February, 1936

To Market

When "Kamaainas" (Hawaiian word for those born in the Islands) buy food, they go to market and find fresh bread- fruit, mangoes, many other tropical de- lights. But when they want pineapple juice, they call their grocer, as you would on the mainland. And they ask for DOLE Hawaiian Pineapple Juice. They know that the finest pineapples aren't found in markets. These selected pine- apples go from DOLE plantations to DOLE vacuum-sealed cans!

That's why we suggest that you — on the mainland — will want to follow the Kamaainas' example. For economy, for unsweetened purity, call your local gro- cer, and ask always for DOLE.

Hawaiian Pineapple Co., Ltd., Hono- lulu, T. H., U. S. A. Sales Offices: 215 Market Street, San Francisco, California.

porch roof. The word that had been said lay between them and she wanted to laugh suddenly, to look at this man, seeing him as her husband — but of course that was absurd because he did not want to be tied. It would take some getting used to, she thought. But it might be nice to have a man on the place . . . we've been friends so long I can hardly remember when he wasn't in my life ... I suppose I've always been a little in love with him. But it doesn't mean anything to a man. I mustn't forget that. It would be silly if I let it mean anything to me, either. Perhaps your husband would like the hearthbrush . . . but the hearth was nothing to him who must be free.

It was different with a woman. She might be free, too, and like it, but a woman would exchange freedom for something warmer. A woman had need of a hearth, of security. Well, she had them, hadn't she?

She looked at her lover balancing the hearthbrush thoughtfully in the palm of his hand. What went on in a man's mind there was no telling. His eyes crinkled in laughter but he did not look at her.

"Yes," he said to the Fuller Brush man, "I like the hearthbrush. We need a hearth- brush," he said. "It's something we've been needing for years." There was no hint of laughter in his voice. He looked at her then, the defenses gone from his eyes, so that she caught her breath and looked quickly away.

When he and the Fuller Brush man had gone out the girl gathered together the

first child, Sarah, was born. Within two years Tom and Nancy had moved. The new farm was over by Hodgen's Mill, hard and rocky foothill country where a living was to be gained only by unremitting toil. This was the Sinking Spring farm. On it was a small, floorless cabin, and Nancy settled down to make a home of it as best she could.

There came a cold Saturday afternoon in February when Tom Lincoln ran out of the cabin to hail a boy who was riding by with some grain for the mill. He told the boy to go fetch Peggy Walters, the granny- woman. Aunt Peggy was washing dishes at the time. She dried her hands, bundled up well, got on behind the boy and rode over to the Lincoln cabin. All night long they sat up with Nancy. Just before sun- up on Sunday morning her time came. A child was born. They called him Abraham.

The next few years were difficult ones for Nancy. She and her husband moved about in Kentucky, seeking in vain to gain a foothold for some comfort and security. A third child was born, a sickly little one they named for his father. He soon died. In 1816 Tom Lincoln determined to strike out for new lands. He made an exploratory trip to Indiana and then came back for Nancy and Sarah and Abe. They reached the new home in November of 1816, facing a winter so cold that it is still spoken of in Indiana as "eighteen hundred and froze to death." Against this merciless cold they had only a rude lean-to, built against the side of a hill, with a bearskin rug thrown across the open end.

Spring came, and with it the promise of fairer times. Good reports were sent back to Kentucky. Nancy's foster-parents,

breakfast dishes and stacked them in the sink. She poured water from the kettle on the soap powder so that the suds foamed over the edge of the dishpan. She could hear their voices outside the door saying goodbye with cheerful inflections. "Yes, we think it's a pretty nice place," he was saying to the salesman. And she heard the car start and slide out of the driveway and go into second to take the hill before the door opened again.

SHE felt happy inside and as though there were no weight to her body. She felt clean and young and alive and as if something had happened that she had been awaiting for a long time. It was because of the swimming hole, she reminded herself. She could plant iris and forget-me-nots along the banks and by next year it would be as if it had always been there.

She did not turn when he came into the kitchen but went on washing the breakfast dishes and setting them in the rack to dry.

He came up behind her, putting his arms under her arms, holding her close against his body. Slowly he rubbed his cheek against her hair.

"Out of the mouths of babes — " he said. "Darling, do you think I look," he asked, "like a husband?"

She leaned her head back against his shoulder, her wet hands brown against the white ledge of the sink.

"If you'll dry the silver," she said, "we can get on with our swimming hole. If you look like anybody's husband," she said, "I guess it'll have to be mine."

Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, and another aunt, Nancy Hanks Hall (with whom Nancy Hanks Lincoln is sometimes con- fused) with her husband, Levi Hall, came out to join the settlement. They took over the lean-to, and Tom Lincoln built a crude cabin for himself and Nancy and the children. The next year, in the summer of 1818, just as they were beginning to get a little farm cleared and planted, the dreaded "milk-sick" swept through south- ern Indiana. This was undulant fever, which blighted animals as well as humans, and was often passed on to humans in cows' milk. All over the countryside, peo- ple were dying, cows were dropping their calves, and farmers knelt in blank terror and prayed. Thomas and Betsy Sparrow were swept away, and Levi and Nancy Hall followed them.

Then Nancy Hanks Lincoln came down with the fever. The life that was kindled so fitfully in western Virginia thirty-five years before, the life so shrunken and warped with struggle, was nearing its end. Wanly she looked around the cabin. She had wanted a door and a window put in the cabin. She couldn't know that they would not be put in until next year, when a stepmother arrived to take charge. Above all, she hoped that her children would be taken care of.

Feebly she motioned to the dark-haired boy at the foot of her bed. She clasped his hand and murmured a parting benedic- tion. Her task was done. Here in this humble cabin stood her son — the son who would grow up to become President of his country, who would be hailed as the Great Emancipator, and who, in the greatness of his soul, would make her memory immortal.

LEMON FLAyOR

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(Continued from page 4)

Nancy Hanks' Spirit Hears of That Sad Little Fellow

Mother of Lincoln Is Told How Fame Came to Son

The j allowing imaginary dialog between Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln, and "The Spirit of the Present," was written 23 years ago by Robert Lincoln \ O'Brien, then of the Boston Her- ald and noif chairman of the \ U. S. Tariff Commission:

Nancy Hanks: I see the calendar I says it is 1914, nearly a century after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the present, whether anyone mortal remembers j that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial?

The Present: Oh, yes. There Is j a monument over your grave at [ Pigeon Creek. A man named Stude- baker of South Bend, End., went there in 1879 and spent $1000 in marking it.

Nancy Hanks: What do you mean? More money than I ever | fsaw in my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had j imade it. Was he a rich descendant j 'of mine?

The Present: He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of-fact citi- zen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the state of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor; '0,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedicated. The governor of the state, now one of the great commonwealths of the union, was there, while a dis- tinguished general from afar de- livered the principal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew anyone to pos- sess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestat. in raised let- ters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mis- take about that?

"What Is This Wonder" Nancy Hanks: What is this won- der of wonders? I realize that my

to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that win- ter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear what became of my little nine-year-old boy out there in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

The World Knows of Him The Present: Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your question number hun- dreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue In which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually by the "man in the street." Actual mil- lions of people know that the 12th of February was the day you wel- comed into your cabin in the fron- tier wilderness that little boy. His birthday in 22 states of the union, including the imperial state of New York, has become a legal holiday.

Nancy Hanks: Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means.

The Present: If you had one copy of every book that lias been written about him you would have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited every city which has reared his statue you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw,

Nancy Hanks: And so my little boy came into all this glory in his lifetime f

The Present: Oh. no. He died at 56. as unaware of how the world would eventually regard him as old Christopher Columbus himself. A few months before his death he ex- j pected soon to be thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he j wrote a letter telling how he should ; strive to help his successor to carry I out the unfinished work. Your little j boy saw so little to indicate the I place that time has accorded him. ] His widow was hardly able to get i from Congress a pension large I enough for comfortable support, and j yet that same body, In less than a I half century, appropriates $2,000,000 —stop to think of that— for a na- il ional monument in his honor, and

that he had shaken hands and con- versed in private audience with your little boy, whom his cosmop- j olite pictured as "leading the pro- cession of the immortals down the . centuries."

Nancy Hanks: This Is beyond me. . I am lost In mystery and amaze- ment. What did my boy— that earn- \ est, sad little fellow of the woods j and streams — do to make men feel ■ this way? How did it all come ' about?

The Present: That might be as = hard for you to understand, without I a knowledge of what has taken j place in the meantime, as the sky- j scrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you j something of what he has done.

Nancy Hanks: I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the story.

Path of Righteousness

The Present: We have in the United States a great democracy. We are making a great experiment for the nations. Your little boy gave friends of democracy the world over the largest measure of confidence In

its permanency and success of any man that has ever lived.

Until recently more than a mil- lion people a year have poured into the United States from lands be- yond the seas, most of them unfa- miliar with our language and our customs and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations went out to meet them, we took as the supreme example ot what we mean by our great experi- ment the life of Abraham Lincoln.

And when we are ourselves tempt- ed in the mad complexity of our material civilization to disregard the pristine Ideals of the republic, we see his gaunt figure standing be- fore us and his outstretched arm pointing to the stratghter and sim- pler path of righteousness. For he was a liberator of men in bondage; he was a saviour of his country.

He became President of the United States, but that affords a small clue to his real distinction. Few people refer to him as "Pres- ident Lincoln." In the idiom of our people he is Abraham Lincoln, called by the name you gave him In the gloom of the wilderness. To that name of your choosing

All the World Knows of His Service, She Learns

no title that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or distinction. And today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Seas and in places under distant skies, chil- dren will recite in their schools his words; men will gather about banquet boards to refresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story.

Mm

THE PITTSBURGH PRESS .

Mil

Lincoln 's Mother Could Return, To Learn What Happened To Her Boy

Editor - Public Official Writes Fantasy About The Return of a Native

Editor's Note — The following imaginary dialog between Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln, and "The Spirit of the Present" was written 23 years ago by Robert Lincoln. O'Brien, then of The Boston Herald and now a member of the V. S. Tariff Commision. Mr. O'Brien has granted permission to The Pitts- Press to publish it.

NANCY HANKS — I see the cal- | endar says it is 1914, nearly a een- j tury after my life in the world | ended. Pray tell me, Spirit of The ' "resent, whether any one mortal I remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial.

THE PRESENT — Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek, Ind. A man named Studebaker, of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1879 and spent $1000 in marking it.

NANCY HANKS — What do you ' mean? More money than I ever saw in my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it. Was he a rich descendant of mine?

THE PRESENT — He was no rel- ative of yours. As a matter-of-fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the State of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor; 10,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedicated. The Governor of the state, now one of the great Commonwealths of the Union, was there, while a distin- guished general from afar delivered the principal oration. This monu- ment cost a larger fortune than you ever knew anyone to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time, assembled there. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lin- coln." Can there be any mistake about that?

NANCY HANKS — What is this wonder of wonders? I realize that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box, were buried under the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to say even a prayer. I supposed that

if anybody in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilderness. My life was short — only 35 years — and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to ex- pect from it So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling mystery.

THE PRESENT — This is the twelfth of February.

NANCY HANKS — That was the birthday of my little boy, a slender,

There is no picture of Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln, in existence. This scene, based on descriptive information furnished by the Car- negie Library, was drawn by Ralph Reichhold,

awkward fellow, who used every ~ ~~' night to climb a ladder of wooden pegs driven into a log, up into a bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear what became of my little 9-year-old boy out there in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

THE PRESENT — Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your question number hundreds of millions today. There is no land' and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually by the "man in the street." Actual mil-

Press staff artist, and shows Abraham Lincoln, a boy, with his mother in their Kentucky log; cab home. Nancy Hanks died when she was 35, anv when her son was nine.

lions of people know that the twelfth of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy.

His birthday in 22 states of the Union has become a legal holiday. Most of the others hold some com- memorative exercises. When the

great financial market of the world opened in London this morning it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, the great republic over the seas, would record no stock transactions this day. The words, "No market — Lincoln's birth- day," travel on ocean cables under every sea, and business in the great

.Hidings, 40 stories high, of New ork City has paused today. NANCY HANKS — Pray tell me iore of the miracle of my little )y's life. I cannot wait to hear hat it all means! THE PRESENT — If you had one )py of every book that has been ritten about him, you would have larger library than you ever saw l your mortal life. If you had sited every city which has reared is statue, you would be more wide- • traveled than any person that du ever saw. The journey would tke you to several European capi- tis. Every possible work that he ^er wrote, every speech he ever lade, every document he ever snned has been collected, and iese have all been printed in sets f books with a fullness such as as been accorded to the works of nly a few children of men. You 3uld count on the Angers of two ands — and perhaps of one — the ten in all secular history who so itally appeal to the imagination f mankind today. NANCY HANKS — And so my ttle boy came into all this glory 1 his lifetime!

THE PRESENT — Oh, no. He

led at 56, as unaware of how the orld would eventually regard him s old Christopher Columbus him- ?lf. A few months before his death e expected soon to be thrown- out f the position he was holding, and 3 he wrote a letter telling how he hould strive to help his successor :> carry out the unfinished work. rour little boy saw so little to in- dicate the place that time has ac- orded him. His widow was hardly ble to get from Congress a pension irge enough for comfortable sup- iort, and yet that same body, in ess than a half century, appropri- .tes two million dollars — stop to

think of that— for a national mon- ument in his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call eventually for far more than this sum.

But I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by reason of having known him. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land. On his seventieth birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three score years and ten was that he had shaked hands and conversed in pri- vate audience with your little boy whom this cosmopolite pictured as "leading the procession of the imJ mortals down the centuries."

NANCY HANKS — This is be- yond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy — that earnest, sad little fellow of the woods and streams — do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

THE PRESENT — That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowledge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

NANCY HANKS — I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the story.

THE PRESENT — We have in the United States a great democ- racy. We are making a great ex- periment for the nations. Your lit- tle boy gave friends of democracy

the world over the largest measure of confidence in Its permanency and success of any man that has ever lived.

Until recently more than a mil- lion people a year have poured into the United States from lands be- yond the seas, most of them unfa- miliar with our language and our customs and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations went out to meet them, we took as the supreme example of what we mean by our great ex- pertment the life of Abraham Lin- coln. And when we are ourselves tempted in the mad complexity of our material civilization to disre- gard the pristine ideals of the Re- public, we see his gaunt figure standing before us and his out- stretched arm pointing to the straighter and simpler path of righteousness. For he was a liber- ator of men in bondage; he was a savior of his country.

HE BECAME PRESIDENT OF

THE UNITED STATES, but that affords a small clue to his real dis- tinction. Few people refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people he is Abraham Lin- coln, called by the name you gave ^ him in the gloom of the wilderness. To that name of your choosing no title that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or dis- tinction.

And today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and in places under dis- tant skies, children will recite in their schools his words; men will gather about banquet boards to re~ I fresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story. Our nation could get along without some of its territory, without mil- lions of its people, without masses of its hoarded wealth; but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up This is the monument erected on this morning of the twentieth over the grave of Nancy Hanks, century without the memory of Abraham Lincoln-s your little boy. 4 -

Pigeon Creek, Ind.

mother, at

Abraham Lincoln's birthplace — the log cabin his father, Tom Lincoln, built at Hodgensville, Ky.

dings, 40 stories high, of New k City has paused today. ANCY HANKS — Pray tell me e of the miracle of my little s life. I cannot wait to hear it it all means!

HE PRESENT — If you had one / of every book that has been Lten about him, you would have *rger library than you ever saw your mortal life. If you had ted every city which has reared statue, you would be more wide- traveled than any person that

ever saw. The Journey would j you to several European capl- Every possible work that he r wrote, every speech he ever le, every document he ever ned has been collected, and >e have all been printed in sets books with a fullness such as

been accorded to the works of (f a few children of men. You Id count on the fingers of two :ds — and perhaps of one — the 1 in all secular history who so Uy appeal to the imagination nankind today.

ANCY HANKS — And so my e boy came into all this glory

his lifetime!

HE PRESENT — Oh, no. He i at 56, as unaware of how the Id would eventually regard him old Christopher Columbus hlm- . A few months before his death expected soon to be thrown- out he position he was holding, and be wrote a letter telling how he uld strive to help his successor carry out the unfinished work. it little boy saw so little to in- icate the place that time has ac- ded him. His widow was hardly e to get from Congress a pension ie enough for comfortable sup- t, and yet that same body, in ; than a half century, appropri- s two million dollars — stop to

think of that— for a national mon- ument In his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call eventually for far more than this sum.

But I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by reason of having known him. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land. On his seventieth birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three score years and ten was that he had shaked hands and conversed in pri- vate audience with your little boy whom this cosmopolite pictured aa "leading the procession of the inv mortals down the centuries."

NANCY HANKS — This is be- yond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy— that earnest, sad little fellow of the woods and streams — do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

THE PRESENT — That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowledge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

NANCY HANKS — I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the story.

THE PRESENT — We have in the United States a great democ- racy. We are making a great ex- periment for the nations. Your lit- tle boy gave friends of democracy

the world over the largest measure of confidence In Its permanency and success of any man that has ever lived.

Until recently more than a mil- lion people a year have poured into the United States from lands be- yond the seas, most of them unfa- miliar with our language and our customs and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations went out to meet them, we took as the supreme example of what we mean by our great ex- pertment the life of Abraham Lin- coln. And when we are ourselves tempted in the mad complexity of our material civilization to disre- gard the pristine ideals of the Re- public, we see his gaunt figure standing before us and his out- stretched arm pointing to the straighter and simpler path of righteousness. For he was a liber- ator of men in bondage; he was a savior of his country.

HE BECAME PRESIDENT OF

THE UNITED STATES, but that affords a small clue to his real dis- tinction. Few people refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people he Is Abraham Lirv- coln, called by the name you gave him in the gloom of the wilderness. To that name of your choosing no title that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or dis- tinction.

And today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and in places under dis- ; tant skies, children will recite in their schools his words; men wifl gather about banquet boards to ro~ fresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story. Our nation could get along without some of its territory, without mil- lions of its people, without masses of Its hoarded wealth; but it would be poor indeed were it to wake ufa

This is the monument erected on this morning of the twentietfi over the grave of Nancy Hanks,

Abraham Lincoln's mother, at Pigeon Creek, Ind.

century without the memory of your little boy.

Abraham Lincoln's birthplace — the log cabin his father. Tom incoln, built at Hodgensville, Ky.

Telephont Dhtrict 7000

// ? t

THE WASHINGTON TIMES,

Robert Lincoln O'Brien's Appreciation of Lincoln

Story of Honors Paid on Earth Surprise Spirit Mother

By ROBERT LINCOLN O'BRIEN

Chairman of the U. S. Tariff Commission. Written for the Boston Herald of February 12, 1914.

NANCY HANKS— I see the cal- endar says it is 1914, nearly a cen- tury after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the Present, whether any one mortal remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial.

THE PRESENT— Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Stude- baker of South Bend. Ind., went there in 1879 and spent $1,000 in marking it.

NANCY HANKS— What do you mean? More money than I ever saw in my life' spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it! Was he a rich descen- dant of mine?

THE PRESENT— He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of- fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty- three years later the State of Indi- ana erected a massive monument in your honor; 10,000 school chil- dren marched in procession when it was dedicated. The governor o the State, now one of the great commonwealths of the union, was there, while a distinguished gen eral from afar delivered the prin- cipal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew anyone to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, In raised letters, on? may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mis- take about that?

"What Is This Wonder?"

NANCY HANKS — What is ihte wonder of wonders? I realized that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box. were buried under the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to say even a prayer. I supposed that if anybody in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilderness. My life was short — of only 25 years — and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to expect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appall- ing mystery!

THE PRESENT — This is the Twelfth of February!

NANCY HANKS— That was the birthday of my little boy, a slender, awkward fellow who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden pins driven into » J'mt. ua into a bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear what became of my little 9-year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

The World Knows of Him

THE PRESENT— Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your question num- ber hundreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually by the "man in the street." Actual millions of people know that the twelfth of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in 22 States of the Union, including the im- perial State of New York, has be- come a legal holiday. Most of the

ROBERT L. O'BRIEN

others hold some commemorative exercises.

When the great financial mar- ket of the world opened in Lon- don this morning, it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, the great republic over the seas, would record no siock transactions this day. The words "No market — Lincoln's birthday," travel on ocean cables under every sea, and business in the great buildings, 40 stories high, of New York city, has paused today. So it does at Fort Dear- born— you remember — on Lake Michigan, now one of the fore- most cities of the world.

NANCY HANKS— Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means!

Appeals to Mankind

THE PRESENT— If you had one copy of every book that has been written about him. you would have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited every city which has reared his statue, you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take you to several European capitals. Every possible work that he ever wrote, every speech he ever made, every docu- ment he ever penned has been collected, and thes* have all been printed in sets of books with a fullness such as has been ac- corded to the works of only a few children of men. You could count on the fingers of two hands, and perhaps of one, the men in all secular history who so vitally ap- peal to the imagination of man kind today.

NANCY HANKS— And so my little bor came into all this glory in his lifetime!

THE PRESENT— un, no. He died at 56, as unaware of how the world would eventually regard him as old Christopher Columbus him- self. A few months before his death he expected soon to be thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he wrote a letter telling how he should strive to help his successor to carry out the unfinished work.

Your little boy saw so little to indicate the place that time has accorded him. His widow was hardly able to get from Congress a pension large enough for com- fortable support, and yet that same body, in less than a half- century, appropriates two million dollars — stop to think of that — for a national monument in his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call for far more than this sum.

But I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by reason of having

Spirit of the Present Carries Word to Nancy Hanks

known him. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land.

Leading the ImmortaJs On his seventieth birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three score years and ten was that he had shaken hands and conversed in private audience with your little boy, whom this cosmopolite pic- ' tured as "leading the procession of the immortals down the centuries." j NANCY HANKS — This is be- yond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy — that earnest, sad little fel- i low of the woods and streams — i do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

THE PRESENT— That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowledge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

NANCY HANKS— I am hang- ing on your words. I long to hear the story.

Path of Righteousness THE PRESENT— We have In the United States a great democ- racy. We are making a great ex- periment for the nations. Your little boy gave friends of democ- racy the world over the largest measure of confidence in its per- manency and success of any man that has ever lived.

More than a million people a year now pour into the United States from lands beyond the seas, most of them unfamiliar with our language and our cus- toms and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations go out to meet them we take, as the supreme example of what we mean by our gTeat experiment, the life of Abraham Lincoln. And, when we are our- selves tempted in the mad com- plexity of our material civiliza- tion to disregard the pristine ideals of the republic, we see his gaunt figure standing before us and his outstretched arm point- ing to the straighter and simpler path of righteousness.

For he was a liberator of men in bondage, he was a savior of his country, he was a bright and shin- ing light.

He became President of the United States, but that affords small clue to his real distinction. Few Americans ever refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people, he is Abraham Lincoln, called by the name you gave him in the wilderness gloom. To that name of your choosing no titles that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or dis- tinction. And today, from the At- lantic to the Pacific seas, and in places under distant skies, children will recite in their schools his words, men will gather about ban- quet boards to refresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story.

Our nation could get along with- out some of its territory, without millions of its people, without masses of its hoarded wealth, but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up on this morning of the Twentieth century without the memory of Abraham Lincoln — one of the really priceless possessions of the republic.

NANCY HANKS AND LINCOLN

nan n n n nun tt tt a n n a

Pioneer Mother, in Imaginary Dialog, Learns of Sons Career

The following Imaginary dialog between Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln, and "The Spirit of the Present" was written 23 years ago by Robert Lincoln O'Brien, then of The Boston Herald and now chairman of the U. S. Tariff Commission:

JyTANCY HANKS — 1 see the calendar says it is 1914, nearly a century after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the present, whether any one mortal remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial.

The Present — Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Studebaker, of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1878 and spent $1000 in marking it.

Nancy Hanks — What do you mean? More money than 1 ever saw in my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it. Was he a rich descendant of mine?

The Present — He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of-fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the State of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor, 10,000 school children marched in proces- sion when it was dedicated. The Governor of the State,

now one of the great com- monwealths of the Union, was there, while a distin- guished general from afar delivered the principal oration. This monument cost a larger for- tune than you ever knew anyone to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mistake about that? u tt tt

NANCY HANKS — What is this wonder of wonders? I real- ize that my mortal remains, in- closed in a rough pine box, were buried under the trees at Pigeon

Creek, and that no minister of re- ligion was there to say even a prayer. I supposed that if any- body in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilderness.

My life was short — only 25 years — and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little fur- ther to expect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling mystery.

The Present — This is the 12th of February.

Nancy Hanks — That was the birthday of my little boy, a slen- der, awkward fellow, who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden pegs driven into a log, up into a bed of leaves in the loft, I and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care

that the frail little fellow needed Did you ever hear what became of my little 9-year-old boy out there in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

T^HE PRESENT — Of course I

J™ „hf>arci what became °f

™u Fewhavenol. The people who could answer your question number hundreds of millions todav There is no land and no tongue "in which ■ the information you seek could not i be supplied, and usually by th= man in the street."

that the 12 h of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin '

in the frontier wilderness that lit- tle boy. His birthday in 22 states | of the Union, including the im- : perial State of New York, has be- ! come a legal holiday. Most of the I others hold some commemorative | exercises.

When the great financial market ' of the world opened in London ! this morning it was with the !, knowledge that the United States of America, the great republic over the seas, would record no I stock transactions this day. The , words, "No market — Lincoln's birthday." travel on ocean cables under every sea, and business in . the great buildings, 40 stories | high, of New York City has paused today.

Nancy Hanks — Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means!

The Present — If you had one copy of every book that has been written about him. you w:ould have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited every city which has reared his statue, you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take you to several European capitals. Every possible word that he ever wrof every

speech he ever made, every docu- ment he ever penned has been collected, and these have all been printed in sets of books with a fullness such as has been accorded to the works of only a few chil- dren of men. j You could count on the fingers of two hands— and perhaps one— the men in all secular history who so vitally appeal to the imagina- tion of menkind today.

Nancy Hanks — And so my little boy came into all this glory in his lifetime!

tt a tt

THE PRESENT— Oh. no. He died at 56. as unaware of how the world would eventually regard him as old Christopher Columbus himself. A few months before his death he expected soon to bo thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he wrote a letter telling how he should strive to help his successor to carry cut the unfinished work. Your little boy saw so little to indicate the place that time has accorded him.

His widow was hardly able tn get from Congress a pension large enough for comfortable support, and yet that same body, in less than a half centurv, appropriates $2.000.000— -.top to think of that — for a national monument in his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call eventually for far more than this sum.

Bui I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by reason of having known him. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land. On his seven- tieth birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been.

But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three score years and ten was that he had shaken hands and conversed in private audience with your little

boy, whom this cosmopolite pic- tured as "leading the procession of the immortals do«Ti the cen- turies."

van

NANCY HANKS— This is be- yond me. I am lost in mys- tery and amazement. What did my boy— that earnest, sad little fellow of the woods and streams — do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

The Present— That might be as hard for you to understand, with- out a knowledge of what has tak- en place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

Nancy Hanks — I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the story.

The Present— We have in the United states a great democracy. We are making a great experi- ment for the nations. Your little boy gave friends of democracy the world over the largest measure of confidence in its permanency and success of any man that has ever lived.

Until recently more than a mil- lion people a year have poured into the United States from lands beyond the seas, most of them un- familiar with our language and our customs and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations went out to meet them, we took as the supreme ex-

ample of what we mean by our great experiment the life of Abra- ham Lincoln.

» » a

AND when we are ourselves *■ tempted in the mad complex- ity of our material civilization to disregard the pristine ideals of the Republic, we see his gaunt figure standing before us and his outstretched arm pointing to the straighter and simpler path of nghteousnes. For he was a lib- erator of men in bondage; he was a savior of his country.

He became President of the United States, but that affords a small clue to his real distinction Few people refer to him as "Presi- dent Lincoln.- in the idiom of our people he is Abraham Lin- coln, called by the name you gave him in the gloom of. the wilder- ness. To that name of your choos- ing no title that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or distinction. And today from the Atlantic to the Pacific' Seas and in places under distant

skies, children will recite in their schools his words; men will gather about banquet boards to refresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story.

Our nation could get along without some of its territory, with- out millions of its people, with- out masses of its hoarded wealth- but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up on this morning of the 20th Century without the memory of your little boy.

THE INSPIRATION OF

NANCY HANKS AS A MOTHER

Portion of address of Philip Lut.z, Jr , former attorney general of Indi- ana, at the Boionville Press Clu'o Picnic July 10, 1938.

Wo hear of men and women famed for their valor, of 'boys who lay down their lives for their country, of icap- tain.-i who go down with their ships, , of firemen who risk their lives in : danger. Heroes can be found for j every emergency but back of every j 'hero is 'a mother, and back of Abra- ham Lincoln was Nancy Hanks Lin- coln, whcm we honor on this occasion, j Aio Kown Picture As I have approached this sacred ! spot, I have often wondered about j the kind of a woman Nancy Hanks i Lincoln was. We know her purity, her bravery, her gentleness, her lov- l'nsss, her heroism, her reverence, j her honesty, and all her sublime vir- 1 j tues but, as we express ourselves in j southern Indiana, how -did she look? i There is no known picture of Nancy j . Hanks Lincoln. Photography was | not developed until 1840 \nd she died I !n October, 1818. Neither is there j any painting of her, which wels the i j process of producing likenesses be- i fo'-e photography. There is no de- ! pendable description of her. Some ! authorities claim she was a blonde, 'ethers ,a brunette. So far as I have been 'able to determine, it is mere speculation. What were her educa- tional qualifications ? She is known to have signed a will n~ witness by 'her mark in 1 SIS shortly nrior to her death on October 5, 1818, leod'ng 'authorities tc believe that she could not sign her nam?. The copy of the will recently was discovered in the 'records of" Spencer county, Indiana.

But whatever her type of learning, we know that she possessed all the fine virtues a good mother should "nave, because we know that the fine 'virtues of 'a mother are transmitted 'to her son. We know that Abraham Lincoln waa one of the world's great- est, statesmen, but greater than being 'a statesman, he had that quality of 'Hn inherent, matchless, tender human 'sympathy and undertandin r. Hj l'said, wh;le still living in Spencer county, Indiana, while malting a t.vip I down the Ohio and Mississippi riven 'on a fiatboat and seeing the evils- and 'crime of negro slavery, "I don't knew what the future has in siorj for me 'but if I ever get a chance to 1 it slav- 1 ery, I'm going to hit it hard."

Upon another occasion he said, '"Let us have faith that drfhl makers | might, and in that faith let ui to the end dare to do our iuty as we /understand it." He did not preach ^r|ny class creed or political hoi reds. 'In his cabinet he had two. iriec.onc;l- ables, Stanton and Chn > \ but he wis able to meet 'and mold their views and use both of them in his cabinet.

I Whatever Lincoln did be did in the spirit of humility. He disliked the 'pomp of power. His ideals wera olbove the vain display of the hippo- ' drome. He sought to be simple an 1 'understandable. Read h»V Gettvs- 'burr address-, and read also- what ' eveyjr public library provides: fhc : writing and speeches of Abraham 'Lincoln. He believed in the common

'people, of whom he wa|S one, and said 'that the Lord must, love il\nm no- cause he made SO many of them.

Lincoln respected men who had worked their way uu in the world and did not consider that they were to bo criticized or condemned because they had worked their way up. He said, "No men living are more worthy 'to be trusted than those who toil up ■'from povertv."

' Lincoln had a deop sympathy for those who endured physical suffering xnd even death for the cause they ''believed in during the Oivil War. 'During the war, Washington was a city of hospitals. At one time there were twenty-one buildings caring for more than 14.000 patienvs. Alexan- dria wals used as a convalescent camp, holding 'it one time 10,000 patients. Lincoln was accumtomed to go 'from hospital to hospital visitin.tr the sick 'and dying, encouragig, sympathizing ' and p rrjy ing. \ i \ (; >. ■ < T (-■ \ % « \ \ - > \x

Bulletin of the Lincoln National Life Foundation ------ Dr. Louis A. Warren, Editor,

Published each week by The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Number 526

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA

May 8, 1939

THREE LINCOLN MOTHERS

Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, will receive proper recognition on Sunday, May 14, when the annual pilgrimage to her grave is made by the Boy Scout troops of Southern Indiana. Lincoln's stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, will also be honored by the wide dis- tribution of an inspirational picture of the last visit which her illustrious stepson paid her. But the third Lincoln mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, the mother of Abraham Lin- coln's own children, will hardly be given a thought on the second Sunday in May.

Nancy

Lincoln's own mother was once despised and censured by most of those who wrote about her. She has now emerged from the purely traditional and misty back- ground which made her a waif and an irresponsible wan- derer to an honorable place in the family history of her noble son. This has only come about by the untiring efforts of several historians who were not willing to allow her place in history to become established by the gossip about her collected by William Herndon.

This mother had the privilege of tutoring her son, Abraham, but nine short years before she was snatched away. She was a young mother just in her early twenties when her first child, Sarah, was born. Two years later Abraham came and then after another two years a child named Thomas for his father. The youngest boy died when about two years old so there were but two children left for the mother to care for, an easy task compared with the lot of so many pioneer mothers with large families.

When Nancy Hanks Lincoln moved with her husband to Elizabethtown, Kentucky immediately after her wed- ding, there is every reason to believe that she found a close friend in a young lady of the town, Sarah Bush Johnston, who had been married but a few weeks before. Nancy Lincoln's first child and Sarah Johnston's first child were born about the same time. In the rearing of these infants the young mothers would have much in common to discuss. Little did Nancy Lincoln dream at this time that her friend Sarah Johnston would become the stepmother of her children.

Sarah

The brother of Sarah Bush, Elijah, and Thomas Lincoln were very close friends in the early Kentucky days and they made a trip to New Orleans together in 1806. While they were away on the trip Sarah, but eighteen years old, married Daniel Johnston. When Thomas and Elijah re- turned, both purchased gifts for Sarah at the Bleakley and Montgomery Store.

Thomas Lincoln as a young man had received the ap- pointment as a patroler for Hardin County as early as 1803 and Sarah's father, Christopher Bush, was captain of the patrol. Thomas must have met Sarah who was then but fifteen years old, and he had probably known her as a growing child as she was but nine years of age when he first went to Elizabethtown to work.

Nancy, Thomas Lincoln's first wife, died in 1818 and on the following year he went back to Elizabethtown to marry a second wife. He chose the woman whom he had known from his childhood, Sarah Bush Johnston, then a widow. Abraham Lincoln's second mother or stepmother was even younger than his own mother.

After the marriage Sarah immediately became the mother for three orphaned groups, her own three chil- dren, Thomas Lincoln's two children, and a boy by the name of Dennis Hanks whose foster parents were dead and who therefore found lodging in the Lincoln home. It was no small task to mother three groups of children, yet she played no favorites in this Southern Indiana orphanage.

No stepmother could have shown more kindness in

bringing up a child than Sarah displayed in her rearing of Abraham Lincoln. She was richly rewarded for her motherly attention to the needs of this boy, as in her last years he was to establish her in a home which he had provided for her.

Mary

Certainly the name Mary is not a bad name for a mother and there is no evidence that Mary Lincoln was other than a good mother for Abraham Lincoln's four boys. She brought them all through the difficult years of early infancy and three of them passed from the period of childhood to youth.

When Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln she was but twenty-four years of age while her husband was nine years her senior. No one in Springfield has even ventured the suggestion that she was not a capable mother in every respect. She was the intellectual su- perior to most of the mothers of the prairie country. She had always lived in a home of culture. There had always been new babies coming into the Todd home in Lexington during all the years she was growing up, and she must have known more than the average woman about rearing children.

Mary Todd was a good mother in that she kept her own mind alert and was of tremendous help in bringing at least one of her sons to occupy a prominent place in government affairs, and the possibilities are that if Robert Lincoln had permitted his name to be used as a Presi- dential nominee she might have reared a President as well as married one.

Mary Lincoln of course never knew her husband's own mother because she died the very year Mary was born. She did know Lincoln's stepmother, and a letter which she wrote to her, a copy of which was discovered in Charleston, Illinois several years ago, might suggest the attitude towards the good woman who took care of Lin- coln as a youth by the good wife who mothered his chil- dren when he became a man. "Private

"Chicago, Dec. 19th, 67

"Mrs. Sally Lincoln "My dear Madam:

"In memory of the dearly loved one, who always re- membered you with so much affection, will you not do me the favor of accepting these few trifles? God has been very merciful to you, in prolonging your life and I trust your health has also been preserved — In my great agony of mind I cannot trust myself to write about, what so entirely fills my thoughts, my darling husband ; know- ing how well you loved him also, is a grateful satisfaction to me. Believe me, dear Madam, if I can ever be of any service to you, in any respect, I am entirely in your serv- ice. My husband a few weeks before his death mentioned to me, that he intended that summer, paying proper re- spect to his father's grave, by a head and foot stone, with his name age and so forth and I propose very soon carry- ing out his intentions. It was not from want of affection for his father, as you are well aware that it was not done, but his time was so greatly occupied always. I will be pleased to learn whether this package was received by you — Perhaps you know that our youngest boy, is named for your husband, Thomas Lincoln, this child, the idol of his father — I am blessed in both of my sons, they are very good and noble. The eldest is growing very much like his own dear father. I am a deeply afflicted woman and hope you will pray for me —

"I am, my dear

Madam, "Affectionately yours, "Mary Lincoln. "This letter please consider entirely private — I shall be greatly pleased to hear from you."

!

Anonymous

Nancy Hanks-I see the calendar, says U is 1914, nearly a century after

mv lifs in the Wtrld ended. Pray tea me, spirit of the Present,

° T^Present-Oh, yes. There Is a

Nanwianks-What do youmean? years after I had made.it! Was ne «f vniirs As a matter-of-fact citi-

fater the sfate ?f Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor foS school children marched £ procession when it was > The Governor of the state, nuw « S : the great commonwealths of the TTnion was there, while a distin Sed general from afar delivered thP nrincipal oration. This monu mentPcost 'a larger fortune than you Ser knew any one to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on th~ pedestal in raised letters one rnay read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln Can there be any mistake about that? "WHAT IS THIS WONDER?" Nancv Hanks— What is this won- de? of wonders? I realized that my Sort°afl"emains, inclosed m a rough tMtip box were buried under tne & S Won Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to ™v even a prayer. I supposed that if anybody in all this earth of yours wouM be surely forgotten, and soon Gotten it would be Nancy Hank*,, the plain woman of the wildernewBr IMv n e was short^-of only 25 yet.. Snd in it I saw little of the great worid and knew little of it, and on I ISSs oS had little further to^pec from it So, I pray, break to me tne meaning of this appalling myste-' The Present-This is the 12th ol

F NlncyHanks-That was the birth- day ol my little boy, a slender, awK- Sd fellow who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden pins driven into a log, up into a bed ol feaves in the loft, and there to dream- Whatever became of that sad Utile boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he Turned ailing. I hated to go away. fTa? afrSd his father could no, give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear wiatVame of my httle 9-year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

of February was the day you wel- comed into your cabin in the fron tier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in 22 states of the Union, including the imperial state of New York, has become a legal holiday. Most of ^ others hold some com- memorative exercises When the great financial market of the Smriri onened in London this morn- S itPwa? wito the knowledge St the United 'State* of America the sreat repubhc over the seas, woulf r2ordPno ^ock transactio^ this dav The words "No marKet

birthday." travel on ocean cables under every ■ sea. the busmess in the great buildings, 40 stories high of New York city, has paused today So it does at Ft. Dearborn- vou remember-on Lake Michigan now one of the foremost cities of

^Nancy^Hanks-Pray tell me more of toe miracle of my little boy's life I cannot wait to hear what it all means.

his 70th birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner He chatted to them of whathe had seen and where he had been • But ! he dismissed all the honors of the Wg world by saying that the one thing That remained most worth while in his three-score years and ten was that he had shaken hands and con- versed in private audience with your httle boy whom this cosmopolite ptotured as "leading the Procession of the immortals down toe cen-

tUNancy Hanks-This is beyond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy-that earnest, sad. httle fellow of the woods and streams -do to make men feel this wS? HOW did it all come about?

THE WORLD KNOWS OF HIM

The Present-Of course I have hPard what became of him. Few Save not The people who coula ansv^ your question . number hun- dreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which

he information you seek could noo

*6 STnU the stfeeK^Stual \ Sof pSeSw that toe 12th

APPEALS TO MANKIND

The Present-If you had one copy of every book that has been written about him you would have a larger library than you ever saw 'in your mortal life. « you had visited S city which has reared his statue you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take

von to sPVPral V-"™™™.. ™.pitalS.

Every' "possible* work that he ever vSote every speech he ever made, ever?' document he ever penned has been collected and these have all been printed in sets of books with a fullness such as has been accorded to the works of only a C.C0 Sren of men. You could

t0Nancy Hanks-And so my little boy came into all this glory in his lifetime. „ died at

S STouTstriv* to MP ™S

SOrtto voTlittle bo""o Uttle AlcIS "tie that time has to maicare w«= Tvidow was

far more than this sum. LEADING THE IMMORTALS

But I could tell you only half the story Men have retired from busi- es? to go into solitude to study his hie Others have been made famous bv reason of having known him. I recall^ a New York financier whohad l known the high life of the wbrld. Sung with the princes and Statesmen of nearly every land. On

, what he na^aone t on

Nancy Ha^I am hf B^t your wotds. I long to hear me

The Present-We have in United States a great aemo

gSK? d-ocracy V^g*" \

V^rTds bevond the seas, most of them °Ur SeSnfwho ara older b» .

»nin And when we are ourseivco ?e£ptedto the mad complexity of owmaterial civilization to disregard X nristine ideals of the republic we see n Sunt figure standing before us and his outstretched arm point- £ to thl straighter and simpler oath of righteousness. For he was a Serator ogf men in bondage he was a savior of his country, he was a bright and shining light.

He became President of the United States but that affords small clue to his real distinction. Few Americans ever refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people he is Abraham Lincoln, ca led by the name you gave him in the wilderness gloom. To that name of your choosing no titles that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or distinction. And today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific seto, and in places under distant skies, chUdren will recite in their schools Ws words, men will gather about liquet boards to refresh theh ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story. Our nation could get along without some of its territory, without millions of its people, without masses of its hoarded wealth, but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up on this morning of toe 20th century without the memory of Abraham Linco n— one of the really priceless possessions of the republic.

■y

OFFICERS LAURA MERCY WRIGHT, President ELIZABETH GENTRY. Secretary BESS V. EHRMANN, Curator MRS. MINA COOK, Publicity Chairman

HILBERT BENNETT

National Chairman Stamp Committee

MEMBERS OF STAMP COMMITTEE CARL J. ENGELBRECHT OTIS I. EROONER BESS WOOLFOLK DAMON 1. 1 OYD

ALL OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY EX- OFFICIO MEMBERS

Spencer County Historical Society

IS

■ :

DOWN IN THE LINCOLN COUNTRY OF INDIANA

Gnive o! Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Spencer Co. East End Lincoln Pioneer Village. Rockport ROCKPORT, INDIANA Home of the Lincolns in Spencer County

Rockport, Indiana, March 26, 1940.

Dear Sir:

The Spencer County Historical Society, Rockport, Indiana, is writing this letter to ask your assistance in a movement of nationwide interest. We are asking that a Special Mother's Day Stamp be issued on which will be some representation of Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

The enclosed leaflet and petition explain what we are doing. There is no photograph or life painting of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. If a represent- ation of her likeness or face is to be used on the proposed special Moth- er's Day Stamp, an Artist's vision of that portrait must be used. In order that the Spencer County Historical Society may have something definite to offer of the likeness of this pioneer mother, we have decided to select a number of outstanding artists, sculpters, painters, etc. to form what might be called an Artist's Jury to come to some definite conclusion and understanding as to the likeness of this vision. This must be done sooner or later. There must be some artist's vision brought into realization and manifestation in a material way of this outstanding pioneer woman.

We are asking a number of large newspapers and magazines to make recom- mendations of men or women to serve in this capacity. We want the ablest and most outstanding authorities that we can possibly get. To get a correct vision of this pioneer mother is of vital importance. It will stand as a likeness of this sainted mother of an immortal as long as motherhood en- dures. As the material representation cf Christ is the vision of some artist of former years still maintains, so will this selection of the likeness of Nancy Hanks Lincoln endure forever.

You and your staff are much better qualified to recommend suitable men and women for this undertaking than any committee that this society can appoint .

We will appreciate an early reply with your recommendation. Hoping that you will give this matter your serious consideration, and thanking you for your thoughtful efforts, I am

Very sincerely yours,

Chairman Stamp Committee, Spencer County Historical Society.

NANCY HANKS LINCOLN

"Wwtf« *

By Carl J. Engelbrech't, before the Evansville Kiwanis Club The Spencer County Historical So- ciety has undertaken a project to se- cure petitioners in sufficient quantities :o the Postmaster General and the President of the United States to in- duce them to issue a thrue-cent Nancy

ham. In 1816, when they migrated to Indiana, Sarah was nine and Abra- ham was seven years of age. After living two years in this state, Mrs. Lincoln became ill with the disease ■of "milk sickness" and died of it on the seventh day after contracting it: October 5, 1818, age thirty-four.

Her coffin was made by the father, son. and some neighbors, from green Hanks Lincoln postage stamp in 1943 j lumber by the use of a whip saw. She

early pioneer life with all its limi- tations and sank into an eaily grave under the crushing hardships in home makng in an Indiana wilderness. Poverty was her worst enemy. She was married to Thomas Lincoln on June 12, 1806, and two children were I br.7n to this union— Sarah and Abra-

fcc commemorate the 125th anniver sary of her death.

Vaiious individuals and events of historical importance arc honored in this manner by using their portrait or features upon a stamp of some denomination.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln is worthy of that distinction. We feel that she belongs to that group of grJat people who through their services and lives have helped to make this nation ths- greatest nation in thu world, a na- tion that has given the most oppor- tunity, happiness and well being to, mankind in all its history.

Mrs. Lincoln was the mother of , Agraham Lincoln, who has been rated j by some" as the greatest benefactor I to mankind: second to none but the Chr'st. Great men are apt to have j Greatness, as applied its fullest sense of which is based upon | Greatness is often

great mothers. hJre, implies meaning, that genuine service:.

nonfused with fame. Fame is pub- licity, notice, recognition, and adver- tisement. It is highly competitive, selfish, and contractive, and is inter- ested only in self. Greatness is non- competitive, unselfish and expansive, and is interested only in others.

There is a calculating type of ser- vice known as "good business," and as a. source of profit. Service is too d ^icate and precious to succeed un- der such treatment. In our highly developed news agencies we are for"ed to applaud many cheap acts and p.rsons and we are deceived into believing that whoever is widely ad- vertised is worthy. The possession of wealth has likewise becom l so de- sirable and important that it is often wrongly interpreted as a mark of greatness, even to the extent to jus- tify questionable means in acquiring it. Service is no mere device, it is a spirit, a motive, and a dedication of a life for a cause and mankind. Hence, multitudes of famous people are never great and multitudes of great people jiever acquire fame. Few have both.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln belongs to that class of great people who have not acquired fame. Her service to the world was not only in giving birth to the son who was one of the greatest, but by the influence she had upon his life that laid the foundation stone for that grand character who was so important in the history of man.

N ancy Hanks Lincoln was a poor, ■orphan child, as was her husband in his childhood She was reared in

was laid to rest on a knoll south of the Lincoln home at what is now the Nancy Hanks Lincoln State Park in Spencer county. There was no preacher at the funeral to officiate. However, Abraham wrote to Parson Elk'ns, back in Kentucky, to come to Indiana for a special funeral service. Nine months later, in June, 1819, Parson Elkins came, and the sermon was given at the grave, at which oc- casion many friends and neighbors were present. ,

Charles T. Baker, of the Grand- view Monitor, also a Lincoln history student and researcher of Lincoln Lore, states there were local preach- ers in the Lincoln community, but no organized church. The Pigeon Baptist Church was organized later nnd Thomas Lincoln became a mem- ber and official in the same. Accord- 1 ing to Baker, it was customary in those days to have the funeral ser- vice on a church day following the j bur'al. In the case aboVe, the special ■ service was delayed for Parson El- 1 kins, from back in Kentucky, who: w».<i an intimat° fuend of the family.

The loss of the mother was an ir- reparable less to Abraham. Day bv dav he sat by the grave and wept. A pad. far-away look crept into his eyes, ■>vh>h those who saw him in the per- il 5- of his latpr life well remember. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was a pale , faced gentlewoman in a miserable I surrounding. She possessed but one book in the world — the Bible — from which she taught her children daily. Lincoln looked upon his teacher as the embodiment of all the good pre- cepts in that book. In later life he paid the most fitting tribute to his mcther for her influence upon h:s life — "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mcther, blessings on her memory" — and at another oc- casion, "I remember her prayers anc: they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."

Mrs. Lincoln was a devout mother who followed the Golden Rule, and great abilities, of high ideals in mor- als and religion. Of her, Lincoln said to Herndon, his law partner m Springfield, 111., "She was highly in- tellectual by nature, had a strong memory, acute judgment, " and wr.s cool and heroic." Lincoln claimed la have inherited h's quick perception, clear reasoning power, and deep in- tellect from her.

The son whom she bore and who is so important to us today, was born in a Kentucky log cabin, under privi-

nis and

leged, unancestried, unknown- mother's arms his only cradle, the lonely forest his play ground. He rose from adversity to undying fame and greatness.

When he was elected to the presi- dency in 1860, the nation had been shattered and torn by the slave issue,

of its extension into the new terri- tories and states foimed. By the time he was inaugurated, seven of the Southern States had met in con- vention and had drawn up the Ordi- nance of Secession and withdrew from the Union. Four others fol- lowed soon after his inauguration. Thus the Union was broken, the crisis which Webster, CJiay and others were fearing for the past two or three decades came to pass. Few realized, as did Lincoln, the seriousness of the situation. Was he equal to the task confronting him. Seward, the secretary of state, believed the new president a rubber stamp and he, Seward, would icarry on the work or the administration. It was soon learned that L:ncoIn surpassed all others concerned in the official fam- ily and that he would be the presi- dent in action as well.

There was much opposition to the war and friends of Lincoln urged him to try and bring about peace even at the cost of the Union and the pres- tige of the government. In the sec- ond vrar of the war, in the winter of 1862-63, when the North was on the losing" side, some even urged that Lincoln res en and permit some one morf capable to administer the affairs of the nation. It was then when he wrote cut a pledge to himselfl as fol- lows: "I expect to maintain this con- test until successful or unt'l I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or the congress or the countrv forsake mo." In the summer of 1863, aftet* the battle of Gottvsbuvg, the tide turned and the North was beginning to win battles: Lincoln was vindi- cated and neople wore beginning to have confidence in him.

A Reply to Nancy Hanks

by JULIUS SILBERGER

Yes, Nancy Hanks, The news we will tell Of your Abe

Whom you loved so well. You asked first, "Where's my son?" He lives in the heart Of everyone.

In

Children and Books, pubushed by Scott, Foresman

and Company, Chicago. 1947

Different Weekly Newspaper

THE HOOSIER SENTINEL

A 1

Nancy Hanks Hears News of Her Son

By ELMO SCOTT WATSON

(Released by Western Newspaper Union)

AMONG the countless trib- A utes paid to Abraham Lincoln are several, written by newspaper men, which have become Newspaper Classics, i. e., pieces of prose that so caught the public fancy as to result in frequent requests that they be reprint- ed in the newspaper in which they originally appeared. Outstanding among these is an imaginary conversation between Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and a personification of the Present.

It was written in 1914 for the Boston Herald by Robert Lincoln O'Brien, at that time editor of the Herald, from 1931 to 1937 chairman of the United States Tariff commis- sion, and now publisher of the Cape Cod Colonial at Hyannis, Mass. It reads as i follows:

Nancy Hanks— I see the calen- dar says it is 1914, nearly a cen- tury after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the Present, whether anyone mortal remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial.

The Present— Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Studebaker of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1879 and spent $1,000 in marking it.

Nancy Hanks — What do you mean? More money than I ever saw in my life spent on my grave, more than sixty years after I had made it! Was he a rich descend- ant of mine?

The Present— He was no rela- tive of yours. As a matter-of-fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty- three years later the state of In- diana erected a massive monu- ment in your honor; 10,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedicated. The gov- ernor of the state, now one of the great commonwealths of the Union, was there, while a distin- guished general from afar, deliv- ered the principal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew anyone to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mistake about that?

Nancv Hanks — What is this

"AMY i JS DOWN T* THf VlllA6<T,eZRY ?" ''<>J-/^j. '"weiL, S<JU\R£ MCL67W5 GONE T* WASHINxTON

T1 5eE.MADlSOM SWORE IN.AN OC 5PEUMAN

Teu$ Me THIS BONAPAET£ F£"LLA HAS

Captured r-iosr a* Spain, what's new

OUT H£R£, fSCI 6H BOR ? "

*N UTH IN* A TALL, N UVH IN* A TALL, 'C6 PT F£R A NEW BABV DOWN T" TOM LINCOLN*^. NUTHin^ eV£"R HAPPENS Our HCeE".'*

■ gcPR'^TCP By RecjoeST-

Cburfesy Pre^s Pub. Cb. (/YY. WorfdJ

This cartoon titled "Hardin County, 1809" is also a Newspaper Classic. Drawn by H. T. Webster, it was first printed in 1918 in the Kansas City Star and other newspapers receiving the syndicate serv- ice of the Press Publishing company (New York World). Every year since then it has been reprinted in the Star at the request of readers.

v uuuci o :

that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box, were buried under the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to say even a prayer. I supposed that if anybody in all this earth of yours would be sure- ly forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilderness. My life was short — of only twenty- five years — and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to expect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling mystery!

The Present— This is the 12th of February!

Nancy Hanks — That was the birthday of my little boy, a slen- der, awkward fellow, who used every night, to climb a ladder of wooden pins driven into a log, up into a bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little ! fellow needed. Did you ever hear j what became of my -little nine- year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

The Present — Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your question number hundreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually by the "man in the street." Actual millions of people know that the 12th of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in twenty-two states of the Union, including the im- perial state of New York, has be- come a legal holiday. Most of the others hold some commemo- rative exercises. When the great financial market of the world opened in London this morning, it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, the great republic over the seas, would record no stock transac- tions this day. The words "No market — Lincoln's birthday," travel on ocean cables, under every sea, and business in the great buildings, forty stories high, of New York city has paused today. So it does at Ft. Dearborn — you remember — on Lake Michi- gan, now one of the foremost cities of the world.

Nancy Hanks — Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little

boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means!

The Present — If you had one

copy of every book that has been written about him, you would have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited every city which has reared his statue, you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take you to several European capitals. Every pos- sible work that he ever wrote, every speech he ever made, every document he ever penned, has been collected, and these have all been printed in sets of .books

accorded to the works of only a few children of men. You could count on the fingers of two hands, and perhaps of one, the men in all

ROBERT LINCOLN O'BRIEN

secular history who so vitally ap- peal to the imagination of man- kind today.

Nancy Hanks— And so my little boy came into all this glory in his lifetime !

The Present— Oh, no. He died at fifty-six, as unaware of how the world would eventually re- gard him as old Christopher Co- lumbus himself. A few months before his death he expected soon to be thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he wrote a letter telling how he should strive to help his successor to carry out the unfinished work. Your little boy saw so little to indicate the place that time has accorded him. His widow was hardly able to get from congress a pension large enough for comfortable support, and yet that same body, in less than a half century, appropriates two million dollars — stop to think of that — for a national monument in his honor, and on plans so elaborate as to call eventually for far more than this sum.

But I could tell you only half the story. Men have retired from business to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made famous by reason of hav- ing known him. I recall a New York financier who had known ihs high life of the world, min- gling with the princes and states- men of nearly every land. On his seventieth birthday his friends gave him a complimentary din- ner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had

been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that remained most worth while in his three- score years and ten was that he had shaken hands and conversed in private audience with your little boy, whom this cosmopolite pictured as "leading the proces- sion of the immortals -flown the centuries."

Nancy Hanks— This is beyond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy— that earnest, sad little fellow of the woods and streams — do to make men feel this way? How

did it all enmo ahnnn

The Present— That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowledge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean cables and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

Nancy Hanks— I am hanging on your words. 1 long to hear the story.

The Present— We have in the United States a great democracy. We are making a great experi- ment for the nations. Your little boy gave friends of democracy, the world over, the largest meas- ure of confidence in its perma- nency and success of any man that has ever lived.

More than a million people a year, now pour into the United States from lands beyond the seas, most of them unfamiliar with our language and our cus- toms and our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations go out to meet them we take, as the supreme example of what we mean by our great experiment, the life of Ab- raham Lincoln. And, when we are ourselves tempted in the mad complexity of our material civili- zation to disregard the pristine ideals of the republic, we see his gaunt figure standing before us and his outstretched arm pointing to the straighter and simpler path of righteousness. For he was a liberator of men in bondage, he was a savior of his country, he was a bright and shining light.

He became President of the United States, but that affords small clue to his real distinction. Few Americans ever refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people, he is Abra- ham Lincoln, called by the name you gave him in the wilderness gloom. To that name of your choosing no titles that the vain world loiows could add anything of honor or distinction. And to- day, from the Atlantic to the Pa- cific seas, and in places under dis- tant skies, children will recite in their schools his words, men will gather about banquet boards to refresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonder- ful story. Our nation could get along without some of its terri- tory, without millions of its peo- ple, without masses of its hoard- ed wealth, but it would be poor, indeed, were it to wake up on this morning of the Twentieth century without the memory of Abraham Lincoln — one of the really price- less possessions of the republic.

Mother's Day

SPEECH

HON. JAMES M. CURLEY

OF MASSACHUSETTS

IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES

Friday, May 12, 1944

Mr CURLEY. Mr. Speaker, upon May 14 America pays its tribute of love and affection to the mothers of the Nation. God's harbinger of the spring, sweet flow- ers are worn by all in memory of man s best friend— mother. Pure white blos- soms for the mothers who have departed this life with Its surcease of joy and sorrow laughter, and tears. Bright red blossoms for those who are still unceas-

ingly and with light or heavy hearts in the sunshine or shadow bearing their burden until the end.

Tt is a dav of joy and sorrow; joy foi those who a?e blessed with a mother who shares with her children success and ailuie alike, and sorrow for ^hose ^ only a blessed memory of a loved one gone to a place where care and soirow

arepaThe?0Ryan, the poet of the South in his beautiful and inimitable manner has p nned a poem entitled ''Mother's Way which is particularly applicable to this

Off Within our little cottage, as the shadows

While Sunlight touches softly, one sweet

face upon the wall. Do we gather9 close together, and in hushed

and tender tone, Ask each other's full forgiveness, for the AS wrong that each has done Should you wonder why this custom, at the

ending of the day, Eye and voice would quickly answer, It was

once our mother's way. If our home be bright and cheery, if it holds

a welcome true, Opening wide its door of greeting to the

manv — not the few; If we S our Father's bounty, w.th the

needy day by day, •Tis because our hearts remember, this was

ever mother's way. Sometimes when our hands grow weary, oi

our tasks seem very long, When our burdens look too heavy, and we

deem the right all wrong; Then we gain a new fresh courage, and we

Tao^uS EV-F-*. w- our Then rkeeThermemSprecious, while we never cease to pray y,0^nma That at last, when lengthening shadows

mark the evening of our day They may find us waiting calmly to go home our mother's way. Mother's Day is a blessed institution memorable and memorial alike it I arouses in us blessed memories and in- ! sSng sentiments that speak unselfish i sacrifice for the happiness of humanity. 1 Upon Mother's Day there comes to us a realization of the debt each individual ! owe to the mother that bore him the journey into the valley of death cheer- fully and uncomplainingly that we might come into being; the long weary hours sSSit n watchful care ministering to our every want, waiting for the only reward ever enjoyed by mothers, the hour when ' baby lips might utter the magic word-

""TrSnthe days of childhood when our troubles, always appearing so momen- tous, could find but one sympathetic soul to whom they could be unfolded

Then manhood and womanhood and the battle of life, replete with failure and heartache and there, ever patient, evei watchful, ever loving, the mother who bore us to comfort us in our afflictions to cheer us in our sorrows, seeking but one reward— our affection and love.

During the day she does not mind.

There are a host of things to do, Caring for ones he left behind;

Dishes and dusting, mending, too, Flowers to tend by the garden walk,

Ribbons to tie in golden hair, Voices uplifted in playtime talk, Patter of feet upon the stair.

And oh it means so much. It might perhaps suggest to our minds the word Sen by the most beloved I of most re cent poets who P^^ETf^ Snera X speaking^pon this partic- ular subject, said:

Gentlest of critics, does your memory hold

For haS'verse and stories -udely told. Over those boyish scrawls the years nave They nhgS'not bear the world's unfriendly But stTyour smile shines down familiar ToucheTmy words and turns their dross to gold.

rv- as has been so beautifully epito- mSd m a sinSe sentence by our own

Sfed nt^&fStflfl that I am and all tnai i »w

rf'JSEK Day. not -j^- M£ ffibft!i?SI» have

structive feces m > the »°^e ^yed monuments to men ™o toa(ai

SSI

ffieAr„nd'inthe spM« of -fig***

contribution: f„„„v.t Tne greatest battle that ever was fought Shagll I ten y-XXouwmS?ituot:

Nav not with cannon nor battle With sword nor nobler pen,

Nay, not with eloquent word or thought

From minds of wonderful men; But down in a woman's walled-up heart

Of a woman that would not yield, But silently, patiently bore her part

Lo, there on that battlefield. With little cheer, no bivouac song

No gleaming banners that wave, And oh, those battles they last so long

From babyhood to the grave But faithful still as a bridge of stars,

She fights in her walled-up town Fights on and on in endless war,

Then silent, unseen goes down.

At no time in the history of America will there be more mothers with heavy hearts, anxious for the security of their sons and daughters in the armed serv- ices of the Nation than upon this Moth- er's Day. For the sons and daughters which with heroic spirit have gone down 1 into the valley of the shadow to bring I into being. It has been the same sad story almost from the beginning of crea- tion, a story of sadness, a story of sor- row, a story of heartache and heart breaks, a story of tears and mental an- guish upon the part of the mothers of the world. Ah, if we had the courage displayed by the mothers we could end this tragic situation which takes place with unfailing regularity every quarter of a century. It is a tribute to the greed, avarice, lust for power, and the coward- ice of mankind. The opportunities are presented perhaps for the first time in the history of the world to end the slaughter of humanity in the settlement of national and international differences by resorting to arms and the killing of one another. Time and experience have proven that the system which has ob- tained in the past is wrong and has been wrong so long that there is no way in which to justify a further continuance of that system. At the end of the pres- ent war provided the Nations now allied with the United States of America con- tinue united and are willing to substi- tute unselfishness for selfishness and ag- grandizement they can make possible a program of peace and security for the world and serenity and comfort for the mothers of the future.

The Atlantic Charter, hailed as a pan- acea for the ills which have afflicted hu- manity in the past, must be preserved even though it may mean the relinquish- ment of the holding of territory and subjection of the people of India, of Ire- land, of Honk Kong, and of other pos- sessions by Great Britain, and even though it may mean the relinquishment of portions of Poland and the Balkan States by Russia and the withdrawal from Chinese territory by the Japanese. America presents at this critical period in the life of the world an example of the unselfishness and decency that the rest of the world must accept and follow pro- vided we are to save the mothers of the future from the horrors of other wars — perhaps even more disastrous than the present one.

Unity among the Allies and adherence to the Atlantic Charter with control of the wealth of the jvorld, the food supply of the world, the agencies for the con- duct of war in the world, should make it possible to embark upon a program that would mean peace and security for the people of the world to the end that

\

ATOP THE TOWN

Abe's xAngel Mother' Earned All Tributes

By FILOMENA GOULD

A scholarly man I know decid- ed to tell his little girl about the Great Emancipator. "Tomorrow," he began, "will be Lincoln's birth- day."

Whereupon the child gaily shrieked: "Goody! Am I in- vited?"

As naive, almost as imperti- nent, is the urge to add my 2c worth to the Lincoln legend — to consider myself thus invited. Perhaps it is because I am read- ing Sandburg's "Lincoln," which must be the best, certainly the most color- ful, of the long trail of Lincoln biographies.

Or perhaps the Indiana con- nection inspires me — the news of services to be held tomorrow at Nancy Hanks State Memorial at Lincoln City. The memorial is described in the current Outdoor Indiana. One reads of handsome limestone buildings, lovely sculptures, cloisters, the allee leading to the grave of Lincoln's mother, the great hall's simple dignity, the fireplace recalling pioneer days, the walnut paneling, the fine lounge, the cloakrooms, the rest- rooms.

And one thinks of poor Nancy Hanks, who in her hard, brief day knew neither ease nor comfort. She would be dazed by what has transpired on the "pore" ground where she grubbed her lif ^ away

— to die, gaunt, tired and spent, at 36.

Indiana claimed Lincoln as a little boy. Our share in his life includes that stark moment when he lost his mother and watched them bury her in the poor soil to which they had come in the new state, "Indianny."

How poignant is the Nancy Hanks story! It begins when snc was a dark-eyed baby girl brought in a bundle over the Cumberland Gap, and trails for- lornly through her rough Ken- tucky childhood — -a childhood clouded by obscure patrimony or lack of it, for even children oi the rude frontier sensed such stigma.

Nor is there much to lighten the load when one comes to her years as Tom Lincoln's wife. There is no storybook romance, no glint of buttons and bows.

Came February 12 in the year 1809. Kentucky was "cold as Canada.'.' Nancy Hanks bore her son on a bed of cornhusks and bearskins in a one-room cabin

with a dirt floor, one door and one window.

The world into which she brought her son was a hard one. The new state north of the Ohio held promise. But the patch in Indiana to which the Lincolns laboriously moved sounds worse than what they left. A cloth shelter on poles was their first Indiana heme. Paneling, sculp- ture, cloisters, rest rooms — all that, too, was for the ages!

Poor Nancy Hanks. She knew the child until he was a long- legged boy of 8. Beyond that, she knew no more, unless thore is some divine arrangement for mothers who are expendable. Perhaps it would have been enough for her to know that he would immortalize her as "My angel mother."

"Something Extra Speshul . .

Nancy Lincoln Thought He Was; but You Know How Mothers Are!

By H. I. Phillips I

IT WAS SATURDAY and Tom Lincoln had told

the granny-woman, Aunt Peggy, that she had better be watching Nancy.

"What's it goin' to be, a boy or girl?" asked Aunt Peggy.

"I hope it's a boy," said Tom, "and a strong one, the way things are today in this country."

Sunday, Feb. 12, Aunt Peggy was on hand and the baby was born. Nancy, exhausted on the corn- husks in the bed cleated to the corners of the wilder- ness cabin, asked, "What time is it, Tom ? I hear thunder and see lightning flashes . . . It's daylight but the skies are full of stars."

"Take it easy," said Tom. "You've had it rough. It's midwinter and broad daylight. There's no light- ning or stars."

"Everything seems so different and so strange- like. You say it's daylight, Tom? What day is it?"

"Sunday, Feb. 12 . . . just another day," said Tom Lincoln, who would never know how wrong he was.

'Just Plain Abe'

II

"A BOY AND so purty!" exclaimed Nancy as her head cleared.

"He ain't much to look at," grinned Tom. "But he's a rugged feller. He'd better be if he's to get anywhere."

"Stop teasin'," said Nancy. "He'll do all right."

"He's all wrinkled up and solemn as a papoose, just like he had all the troubles of America facin' him," said Tom. "Whatcha goin' to call him?"

"Abraham," said Nancy.

"You know what that means . . . he'll be nuthin' but just plain 'Abe' to everybody wherever he goes, all through life."

"Abe! . . wherever he goes! . . Just plain Abe Lincoln to everybody, everywhere!" sighed Nancy dreamily. "That'll be all right."

ni

Tom Lincoln walked back down the red-clay road with Aunt Peggy. A neighbor, Tom Sparrow, hailed him and asked if everything was well at the cabin.

"Yep. Nancy's had a boy," said Tom Lincoln.

"A boy, eh?" said Tom Sparrow. "That's fine, but he's got his job cut out acomin' into th' world in these hard times away out here at the end of nowheres."

"He looks rugged," said Tom Lincoln.

"I hope the good Lord sees to it that he makes a fine man and goes far," said Sparrow.

"I dunno about goin' far," said Tom Lincoln. "There ain't much chance o' that."

"I'll bet Nancy is ravin' over him," -said the neighbor.

"Yep," said Tom Lincoln, "Nancv thinks he's SOMETHING EXTRA SPESHUL. YOU KNOW HOW MOTHERS ARE!"

* » •

This and That

WITH SO MANY young men trying to get the hang of military life, we like the famous story of Abe Lincoln in command of a company and coming smack up against a stone wall in a field. He couldn't think what the proper command was, so he just said, "Company fall out here and fall in on the other side of the fence!"

In these days of windy politfcians, how wonderful seems Lincoln's first stump speech . . . Running for the state legislature, he said, "I presume you all know who I am. I'm humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by friends to become a candi- date. My politics are short and sweet like the old woman's dance. I'm in favor of a national bank, the international improvements system and a high protective taiiff. These are my sentiments. If elected I'll be thankful; if not it will be all the same."

Carl Sandburg tells the story of how Lincoln came to take up law. A man passing through the town in a covered wagon wanted to sell him a barrel and Lincoln bought it for 50 cents, to help him. Emptying the rubbish out of it, he found a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England! He began reading it and never let up. Today we are inclined to think a kid would toss the Blackstone aside and continue a feverish search for old. "funnies."

■"2-- vi -su

Lincoln's Mother Hears of Miracle

(Written for The Boston Herald of Feb. 12, 1914, by Robert Lincoln O'Brien

NANCY HANKS— I see the cal- endar says it is 1914, nearly a century after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the Present, whether any one mortal remembers that I ever lived or knows my place of burial.

THE PRESENT— Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Studebaker, of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1879 and spent $1000 in marking it.

NANCY HANKS— What do you mean? More money than I ever saW in my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it! Was he a rich descend- ant of mine?

THE PRESENT — He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of- fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the state of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor; 10,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedicated. The Governor of the state, now one of the great commonwealths of the Union, was there, while a distinguished gen eral from afar delivered the prin- cipal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew any one to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mistake about that?

What Is This Wonder?

NANCY HANKS— What is this wonder of wonders? I realized that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box, were buried finder the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to say even a prayer. I supposed that if anybody in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilderness. My life was short— of only 25 years— and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to ex- pect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling linystery!

THE PRESENT— This is the 12th of February!

NANCY HANKS-That was the birthday of my little boy, a slender, .awkward fellow who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden "pins driven into a log, up into a , bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not

very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow needed. Did you ever hear what became of my little nine-year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

The World Knows Him

THE PRESENT— Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your question num- ber hundreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually by the "man in the street." Actual millions of people know that the 12th of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in 22 states of the Union, including the imperial state of New York, has become a legal holiday. Most of the others hold some commemorative exer- cises. When the great financial market of the world opened in London this morning, it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, the great re- public over the seas, would record no stock transactions this day. The' words "No Market — Lincoln's birthday," travel on ocean cables under every sea, the business in the great buildings, 40 stories high, of New York city, has paused today. So it does at Ft. Dearborn— you remember— on Lake Michigan, now one of the foremost cities of the world.

NANCY HANKS — Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means.

Appeals to Mankind

THE PRESENT — If you had one copy of every book that has been written about him you would have a larger library than you ever saw in your mortal life. If you had visited ever city which has reared his statue, you would be more widely traveled than any person that you ever saw. The journey would take you to several European capitals. Every possible work that he ever wrote, every speech he ever made, every document he ever penned, has been collected, and these have all been printed in sets of books with a fullness such as has been accorded to the works of only a few children of men. You could count on the fingers of two hands, and perhaps of one, the men in all secular history who so vitally appeal to the imagination of mankind today.

NANCY HANKS - And so myl little boy came into all this glory I in his lifetime.

THE PRESENT-Oh, no. He died at 56, as unaware of how the world would eventually regard him as old Christopher Columbus him self. A few months before his death he expected soon to be thrown out of the position he was holding, and so he wrote a letter telling how he should strive to help his successor to carry out the unfinished work. Your little boy saw so little to indicate the place that time has accorded him. His widow was hardly able to get from Congress a pension large enough for comfortable support, and yet that same body, in less than a half- century, appropriates $2,000,000— stop to think of that— for a nation- al monument in his honor, and on

painung on liuiwui o uu. ,

plans so elaborate as to call even- tually for far more than this sum.

But I could tell you only half the story- Men have retired from busi- ness to go into solitude to study his life. Others have been made fa- mous by reason of having known him. I recall a New York financier who had known the high life of the world, mingling with the princes and statesmen of nearly every land. On his 70th birthday his friends gave him a complimentary dinner. He chatted to them of what he had seen and where he had been. But he dismissed all the honors of the big world by saying that the one thing that re- mained most worthwhile in his three-score years and ten was that he had shaken hands and conversed in private audience with your little !boy, whom this cosmopolite pic- tured as "leading the procession of the immortals down the cen- turies."

NANCY HANKS — This is be yond me. I am lost in mystery and amazement. What did my boy— that earnest, sad, little fel low of the woods and streams- do to make men feel this way? How did it all come about?

THE PRESENT— That might be as hard for you to understand, without a knowledge of what has taken place in the meantime, as the skyscrapers and the ocean ca- bles and railroad trains that I have spoken about. But I will try to tell you something of what he has done.

NANCY HANKS — I am hanging on your words. I long to hear the story.

THE PRESENT — We have in .he United States a great democ- racy. We are making a great ex- periment for the nations. Your lit-

tle boy gave friends of democracy the world over the largest meas- ure of confidence in its permanen- cy and success of any man that has ever lived.

More than a million people a year now pour into the United States from lands beyond the seas, most of them unfamiliar with our language and our customs ana our aims. When we Americans who are older by a few generations go out to meet them we take, as the supreme example of what we mean by our great experiment, the life of Abraham Lincoln. And, when we are ourselves tempted in the mad complexity of our ma- terial civilization to disregard the pristine ideals of the republic, we see his gaunt figure standing be- fore us, and his outstretched arm p o i n t i n g to the straighter and simpler path of righteousness. For he was a liberator of men in bond- age he was a savior of his coun- try, he was a bright and shining

ll8He became President of the United States, but that affords small clue to his real distinction. Few Americans ever refer to him as "President Lincoln." In the idiom of our people, he is Abra ham Lincoln, called by the name you gave him in the wilderness gloom. To that name of your choosing no titles that the vain world knows could add anything of honor or distinction. And today, from the Atlantic to the Pacific seas, and in places under distant skies, children will recite in their schools his words, men will gather about banquet boards to refresh their ideals by hearing anew some phase of his wonderful story. Our nation could get along without ;ome of its territory, without rml-

lions of its people, without masses of its hoarded wealth, but it would be poor indeed were it to wake up on this morning of the 20 th century without the memory of Abraham Lincoln— tone of the real- ly priceless possessions of the re- public.

Journal Herald Dayton, OHiO : February 8, 1964

Dayton Artist Recreates Lost Image Of Lincoln s Mother

By Hubert Meeker journal Herald Staff Writer

The vague ghost of Abraham Lincoln's mother has wandered through the mind of Lincoln scholar Lloyd Ostendorf for

years.

At last Dayton artist Osten- dorf had to put the image of Nancy Hanks Lincoln down in oils. His painting is the first well-documented portrait of a famous woman whose image died with her in the southern Indiana milk sickness scourge of 1818.

Ostendorf's painting hangs in the Kansas, 111., home of an- other Lincoln scholar, Adin Baber, and is used as the front- 1 piece in Baber's recent book, "Nancy Hanks, Destined Mother of a President."

Ostendorf will give an illus- trated lecture to the Chicago Historical society tomorrow on "A Portrait of Nancy Hanks Lincoln."

"Mrs. Lincoln died before photography was even thought about," Ostendorf said yester- day, "and in the Kentucky wild- erness of that time I doubt it anyone even cut a silhoutte of her.

"In reading word descriptions of her in Lincoln biographies, -Which describe her as dark- I haired, slender, with blue-gray i eyes and an intelligent, high- j forehead, I've tried for years to picture how she actually looked," Ostendorf continued.

"Then I got the idea to ask Baber, when he wrote to Hanks descendants for material, to ask for any photographs of early relatives. We got nearly 100 photographs, half of them of close relatives of Lincoln or his mother."

The photographs confirmed evidence Lincoln favored his mother's side of the family. Many of her relatives had the same high cheekbones, droop- ing eyelids, square jaws and large ears.

"They even had moles on their faces just as Lincoln did," Ostendorf said. And he added a small mole on the right cheeK in his portrait.

The painting characterizes a woman who was intelligent, sensitive, strong and mild- mannered, with the same haunt- ing gaze and slightly amused smile Lincoln himself often dis- played.

Mrs. Lincoln died at the age of 33, when Abe was nine years old. The painting represents her a year before her death.

Ostendorf did most of the painting on Lincoln's birthday,

THIS PORTRAIT of Nancy Hanks Lincoln was unveiled in Chicago yesterday by a descendant of the Hanks family. Lloyd Ostendorf, Dayton artist and Lincoln au- thority, was commissioned two years ago to paint it. Tomorrow hell lecture on it at the Chicago Historical society. (Painting Copyright, 1963, Lloyd Ostendorf)

AMONG NEARLY 100 photographs of descendants and relatives of Abraham Lincoln s mother was one of a con- •- u„„ci^A Hmiia Cxishli which Ostendorf believes

Tribune

Chicago, Illinois 2-8-64

i Display Portrait of Nancy Hanks!

Angie,

Adin Baber (left) of Kansas, 111., and L p»»| Sector of Chicago Histor.cal society stand J ,f Nancy Hanks Lincoln in sooety s pho,o) nue and Clark street.

A portrau of " S|:0S wK£X Unco n coin's mother -Nancy Hanks wom«u ^ ^ ghe

Lincoln -was unveiled yes er- was 9 yea ^ day at the Chicago Historical ^erjms p

society. j 0stendorf will discuss his

It was commissioned by Adin ^ten likengss ?aber of Kansas, Edgar county . search <° ^ lec,ure, ,h0se great-grandfather jas .a - ^ ^ Hanks

first cousin of the P.rei5l^e"lv . , - at 3 p. m. tomorrow The portrait was painted by I Lu uolr a t ium Tne

rjoyd Ostendorf of Dayton, who , in he socug ^ ;/d 93 tintypes and daguen*o- gg»gj^£ftra the 155th

The

MOTHERS 0/ AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

Doris Faber

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

* * *

* 10 *

* * *

THROUGH NATURE'S BACK DOOR

Nancy Hanks Lincoln

He* ,00 cabi* stood near a spring of icy water out of a cave-most authorities agree on this. Two and a halt mrie south of the Kentucky village of Hodgenvlle, such a spnng std drip from the same rocks; and so reverent tounsts can gaze on the rite of Ahraham Lincoln's hirth with some confidence although not a much can be sard for the particular cabin -hjch ha^een en^nned ,nside a marble temple atop four hers of marble talis Even less can be said for Ore legend enveloping the person of Lincoln s mother.

Her name was Nancy Hanks and she died when her son was nine Vea"s"m st nothing else about her has the nng of posihve act She may have been saintly-and a lot of good people have taed to le hH halo. On the other hand, there was a Nancy Hank hiraround her time in her area who had the reputation of being a "/rmmi in either case, and the circumstance £ o ^ only an indirect bearing on her character, she was probably messmate.

But her son probably was not. As the result of an extraordinary amount of painstaking inquiry by a scholarly parson and vanous

118 The Mothers of American Presidents

Pious scholars, it has been all but established that Honest Abe en

teed tins world respectably-whieh he himself could vtr have

tne clue that led to the discovery of an itinerant preacher's personal ledger A man m an excellent position to gain his trust tnLITZ mehncholy which marked the sixteenth Wsiden^ ^ the §U i ed States throughout his maturity stemmed from his belief jn mother's and his own bastardy. m hl$

That man was Billy Hemdon, Lincoln's law partner before h.

For the most part, the story of Lincoln's mother is &™2o[°?0

sokmn and comfc-to - *•

Aside from his contribution, the sum total of reliable data afc« f ■ng £12* ^ T ,ight °f 5

paLT^bott born 5?Vta£> f^S C°m^ Kent»^. My

tZr^Tf- "Good hear!" he exp,°M- "StatontThg, '

fa« op all hnman sympathy from this sacred man! Never,™ coin m Uhnois, he wrote hundreds of letters BuThe hi r

Nancy Hanks Lincoln ng

giving lectures and by sharing his findings with various people who appealed to him for information, he brought up the subject of Lincoln's mother.

As Hemdon recalled, it had been 1851 or thereabouts when he and Mr. Lincoln had a bastardy case to argue, over at the circuit court in Petersburg, Menard County, State of Illinois. Mr. Lincoln, who would have been forty-two or -three at the time, appeared notably gloomy driving out of Springfield, which his young partner put down to his being occupied with trying the case in his mind. Then some three miles along the way, just where a swollen creek came lapping right onto the road under the wheels of their buggy, Mr. Lincoln all at once spoke up:

"Billy, I'll tell you something, but keep it a secret while I live . . ."

Herndon kept the secret until the unctuous process of sanctifying the nation's slain leader disgusted him; even such harmless vul- garisms as Lincoln's habit of saying "gal" for "girl" were being edited out of anecdotes. Then Herndon felt compelled to step forward and say Mr. Lincoln had confided that his own maternal grandmother, being poor and credulous in her Virginia girlhood, had been shame- fully taken advantage of by a rich planter. Thus his mother had arrived on this earth through nature's back door.

It had struck Herndon originally, and he never changed his mind on this point, that Lincoln was moved to talk as he did because their impending court case required a discussion on hereditary qualities of temperament and so on. He said that Lincoln had gone on to remark that his own mother had inherited much from her unknown father, and that he himself had inherited in the same degree from her. The poignancy of a familiar quotation becomes genuine when it is quoted in its full context— according to Hemdon, what Lincoln said next was: "All that I am or hope ever to be I get from my mother, God bless her. Did you never notice that bastards are generally smarter, shrewder, and more intellectual than others? Is it because it is stolen?"

Friends tried hard to dissuade Hemdon from making any such confidences public, but he would not heed them. . . What makes Europe and America love Christ?" he demanded. "It is pur sympathy that is at the root; and shall I strip Abraham of his crown and cross? It is criminal to do so. . . . What's the cause of his sadness, his gloom, his sometimes terrible nature? What made him so tender, so good, so honest, so just, so noble, so pure, so exalted, so liberal, so

120 The Mothers of American Presidents

tolerant, so divine, as it were? It was the fiery furnace through which God rolled him, and yet the world must not know it, eh!"

Herndon's vehemence owed more than a little to his researches in Kentucky, for on the basis of what he heard from there he was tempted to accept the conclusion that Nancy Lincoln had done as her mother did. He certainly found quite a gamey collection of local gossip: that Nancy had favored one Abraham Enloe, who bragged often of having fathered her boy; that Tom Lincoln, discovering this Enloe with his wife, had jumped on the intruder and bit off his nose; that Tom Lincoln, before leaving Kentucky for Indiana and maybe much earlier, had been, as Herndon put it, "castrated, fixed, cut." There was more on the same order, all implying that even if Abe Lincoln had been born to a properly married woman, her husband had no part in the matter. Yet the charge could not be proved, and Hemdon did not publish it; in the end, he summoned up the charity to give Nancy the benefit of every doubt.

Still the damage had been done. What he said publicly about her own paternity— plus such other startling episodes as Lincoln's fit of near madness after Ann Rutledge died, and his running off the first time his marriage to Mary Todd was scheduled— caused the forces of American nice-nellyism to mobilize. An atrocity had been committed, the Chicago Tribune trumpeted; at the very least, it was a crime against human decency. Herndon himself was vilified as a notorious drinker, which had been approximately the case at one time, and as a bitter office seeker who begrudged his former partner the glory he could never approach. That was certainly not true, as any reader of Herndon's letters can discover; Billy Herndon wor- shiped Lincoln.

In the long run, he did win the campaign that mattered most to him. Because he spread what he knew about Lincoln, and sometimes what he only thought he knew, no Parson Weems has ever been able to replace the flawed human who became the Great Eman- cipator with a lifeless statue. Every book which so much as mentions the pre-Presidential Lincoln in more than passing reference owes some debt to Herndon, for without him the earlier years would be practically blank. Not only the material he gathered, but also the fren2y of aggrieved inquiry he inspired can with some justice be included in the same category. Without Herndon, it is surely doubtful whether so much energy would have been spent in investigating the legitimacy and the chastity of Abraham Lincoln's mother."

Nancy Hanks Lincoln 121

No matter that Hemdon and his collaborator decided to leave out on the latter topic, there was extensive private correspondence about it which would not have stayed secret; and rumors based on the same gossip Herndon had gathered must have circulated on their own, particularly in the South. But lacking the opportunity pre- sented by the open publication of his other revelations, the chances are that nothing much would have been made of this delicate question. As it was, scurrilous pamphlets with such titles as "The Sorrows of Nancy" began appearing in many parts of the country.

And then a lady named Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock stepped in where scholars still feared to tread. Having been born a Hanks, she was consumed by a strong passion to rehabilitate the good name of a possible connection, and when in the course of various genealogical explorations she came across a Nancy Hanks bom in Virginia to lawfully wed parents at approximately the right period, she cried Eureka! The convolutions of her reasoning in the little book she published in 1899, purporting to prove that this Nancy was the Nancy who became the mother of Lincoln, need not be gone into in any detail; in brief, her Nancy was one generation too old, and probably an aunt of the Nancy. "The two surprising things about this slender book," said the bearded parson who became Mrs. Hitchcock's nemesis, "are, first, that so much misinformation could have been contained in so small a volume, and, secondly, that so many usually discriminating people could have been deceived by it."

William Eleazor Barton, this patriarchal-looking pastor whose en- thusiasm for Lincoln had led him on horseback up and down every hilly path this hero could have trod, undertook to settle the whole legitimacy issue once and for all. What he arrived at has not quite done so-the irate Mrs. Hitchcock tried to get her own pastor to spon- sor a bonfire for burning every copy of the book Barton wrote, and Hitchcockians are still to be found; they probably never will sur- render. But historians have generally accepted his conclusions.

These are that the mother of Nancy Hanks did stray, and so Hem- don's account of his conversation with Lincoln can be trusted; but that if Lincoln brooded about the circumstances of his own birth, he did so needlessly. By the time Barton began his systematic search of courthouse records, there were more alleged fathers of Abraham Lincoln than just the short-nosed Enloe. "The woods are full of them," Barton wrote to a friend. But he was nothing if not methodical, and he traced down the contenders, one by one, till he had shown the

•» The Mothers of American Presidents

iul fngaged m Sphering materia] for his monu-

f TaP^ °f LmC0ln' wrote ^miringly to Barton to he had Ae fee ,ng he was watehing a ehampion bowler. "You sett m no

On^iHssnThld'h3 Sh*a m,'iUre-Sh00tfag ^ add "d their tl , V bee" dlSposed of> Barton and others out

Mdhoor, V° 3 m°re distinct f™«* fo" L.n ofn

had t si 1 6 S'mple Setting of h«*hip which had

£M x^- ass x tit irr

SIZE? £

^ning a slender girl'rooni? 1 1

ome Ifem o° Vreiei bet'er tha" a">"»e toth n!

«f^LtobXpS^h^ — ab-

tied ia„Pvare ftat f°r S°me &e ^tions there were Hante ser- E Le7 It t ^ 1 TCS Madlson' James Monr°e and Robert

hadBtT„fa dSfoenernddiSCb°rd,t0 ^ °" 3 J^Hmfb who Dmi™ ,f daughters, the oldest being a daughter Luev

a" after I?"'5 '"""^f^ folI™ing the Ameril Revolu&n jS

and moved further to K"l i a °ld the nevv farm at a loss turther-to Kentucky. Again, nobody can be certain, but

Nancy Hanks Lincoln 123

it also seems that the infant Nancy lived the first twelve or thir- teen years of her life under the log roof of her grandparents— who, it has to be supposed, did not fail to remind her of the stigma she bore. If she grew into a moody young woman, as some accounts suggest, who can wonder at this?

Her mother did not even stay by her side. During this period, at a town some distance from the Hanks farm, a Lucy Hanks was charged with fornication, but her case never came up for trial. One Henry Sparrow apparently had faith in her redeemability and he married her, forestalling the wrath of justice; as far as can be told, she made him a decent, God-fearing wife and gave him nine children. Yet his beneficence did not extend to keeping a living reminder of her youthful folly among his own children, so little Nancy remained with her grandparents.

Then when her grandfather died, and her grandmother expressed the wish of going back to her old familiar ground in Virginia for her last years on earth, the household was broken up; but if Nancy went to her mother, it was only briefly. One of Lucy's sisters, who also married a Sparrow, took her in, and, it has even been said, saw that she learned to read the Bible, although she never learned to write as much as her name. She did receive training as a seamstress, though, in order that she would be able to earn her own keep.

So she was probably sewing for a few weeks in the home of a family named Berry when a young carpenter she may or may not have known from her younger days came into the settlement where she found herself. Because this was in another county from the area where she and he both had lived, nobody thought for 3'ears to look through marriage records there. Had it been done sooner, there would have been no doubt that on June 10, 1806, Nancy Hanks was lawfully wed to Thomas Lincoln.

He was black-haired and sturdy, with a history in general on the same order as her own. Neither of them could remember any shelter besides mud-chinked cabins, neither had seen beyond forest-rimmed farms and straggly little frontier villages, neither had any education to speak of. Somehow the impression that he was shiftless, but she was strong, has come to prevail; perhaps this was so, but com- paratively recent findings of tax rolls and the like indicate he had some ambition, at least in his younger days. Whatever he did have he lost— before his death some forty years later, he slipped downhill to the extent that where once he had laboriously blockprinted his

!-4 The Mothers of American Presidents

signature on official documents, he later became content with merely marking an X.

Nevertheless, in the nature of things he and Nancy must have cherished some hopes when they set up housekeeping together in the Kentucky village of Elizabethtown. Here Tom worked as a car- penter, and here eight months to the day after their marriage Nancy gave birth to a girl they named Sarah. But carpentry in a place where every man had to be able to use an ax, let alone a saw, must have been so unprofitable that he was soon looking for a farm

Tom had bad luck, that much is certain. For the place he picked tnough it had more than two hundred acres, proved mostly poor soil not worth trying to till, and in the bargain the title to it was unsound The only attraction it had was a spring trickling out of rocks to drop and disappear into a sort of sinkhole. From this it came to be known as the Sinking Spring. Because Nancy gave birth to Abraham Lincoln near this landmark, many thousands of Amer- icans come every summer to stare at it; and because the trickling water has as the National Park Service explains, become vulnerable to small boys, there is a warning sign: unsafe for drinking.

But it was probably pure when Abe Lincoln was born. The spring was one of the few conveniences his mother ever had. Till Abe was big enough to go fetch water for ier, <&e had to do it herself and sue never had an easier time than on this first farm. When her son was only about two years old, the family moved to another tarm that had the advantage of better soil and a cabin facing right on the Cumberland Trail with its rumbling wagons and droves of livestock to break the solitude; but water had to be carried a further distance Here Nancy bore and lost a second son, named Thomas for his father.

Then once more trouble over a clear title developed, and it would take more money than Tom Lincoln could muster to gain unchal- lenged possession. Over in Indiana, land was supposed to be easier to come by, so they picked up and moved another time, northwest- ward toward the Ohio River. It is likely that little Sarah, who was about ten, rode back of her mother on one horse, while Abe who was around eight, sat back of his father. After crossing the river on a makeshift ferry, they pushed on through the heavy forest to the spot Tom had chosen on a solitary scouting trip. He had dug out the side of a hill to provide the most primitive sort of shelter, and this was all they had till he could get a cabin built

Nancy Hanks Lincoln 125

Nancy Lincoln was not fated to move any further than that cabin. The very next summer her aunt and uncle who had kept her during her growing up came to join her, and tire Sparrows brought along a few milk cows. New settlements in this part of the country were leery of cows, and with reason. Until the woods could be well cleared, foraging animals were tempted by a tall and succulent weed which very soon set a cow to trembling peculiarly. Anybody who drank the milk of such an afflicted cow turned sick and almost al- ways died within a few days. This was no superstition; every wilder- ness family had seen it happen. And it happened to the Lincolns.

First both Sparrow relatives sickened, and Nancy nursed them. But one and then the other died from the dreaded "milk-sick," which sometimes spread through a whole community. Other new neighbors followed the Sparrows, and so did Nancy. On the fifth of October in 1818, when she was about thirty-five, her husband and her son nailed together the boards of a coffin for her.

No stone marked her grave, and when Billy Hemdon came search- ing for it in 1865 while still under the emotional shock of her son's funeral, he had to find an eighty-two-year-old lady to show him where to look. In his own notes on his trip, he wrote: "There is no fence around the grave, no palings, enclosures, of any kind, no head- board, no footboard, to mark the spot where Abraham Lincoln's mother lies; curious and unaccountable, is it not? All is dense forest, wild and grand."

The omission has since been remedied, but not grandiosely. A decade later, a private citizen from South Bend caused a simple stone to be set on the spot described by Hemdon, inscribed;

NANCY HANKS

LINCOLN Mother of President LINCOLN DIED Oct. 5, A.D. 1818 Aged 35 Years Erected by a friend of her martyred son 1879

Then in time, a park was created of the land that comprised the Lincoln farm near the Indiana town of Gentryville, and some at- tempt made to do homage to the woman who lived there so briefly. On a rock at the base of the slope where her grave has been pre- sumed to be, visitors are informed- "You are facing the wooded knoll

I2!-,, neM°thmafAm^ Preside

P=U> to greatness." And tat jl ** 3 KWe whi!e "a* *e

r^Sr-S^te^r8^ te SaiA ™» - tall bered her testifying either wav W™!™ *°* * who

remem-

there is no decisive answer- I* eerfuI or ™rose? Aeain

enoe.Notnnexpected^aUseofTh'nS ^

to »n by the fine the stataefis were^ s™ 5

lancoh There are those who say 'hiT o, ^ CTen ^ Abrah™ doomed had he not been ent Sn t 3 ^ W°U,d ^ve P«haps, hie her son, Naney Sn h LT"?* / ta'™Ph-"nd dying as she did than she could I have Z™ \ ?Ti m0K hm°' ^ ™ch a man as her son springs Z e°" had*e Iired !°"ger. How environments, can, of conrse ^ever he, theJm°St Promi™g of after all, on his mov,W 11 i! eS ain.!d- So the case

must

am or hope ^ to te i «* IfittdtL^..*3' 1

*Xoc> East Gs^Jj! ST,

^e&kap^ ^pu \odA^ dkcj up

Paris, Illinois DAILY BEACON MEWS Feb. 9, 1970

hatreds and perpetuated

Baber Tells Facts About Lincoln 'Lie'

Slanderous attacks on Lincoln and his family, generated by political and emotional of the Civi, War by a bitter former associate, were- emphatically refuted here Sunday in a program before the Edgar County Historical Society in mark Lincoln Week for the community,

Program speaker for t ho aft- ernoon session at In Presbyter- ian Church whs Adin Baber of Kansas, noted Lincoln family historian and authority on Nan- cy Hanks, the mother of Lincoln, and her family ,

Oik- of the siguil'icant histor- ical fads related by Mr. Bab- er and one which he urged Ihe new county Historical Society to mark was the burial of one of Lincoln's aunts, "Aunt Sarah Hanks," in Ogden Cemetery lo- cated in a farm field four miles south of Paris and slightly west. "Springfield is proud of Lin- coln's burial, Charleston of Lin- coln's family, so why can't Ed- gar County take note of Lin- coln's aunt who is buried here?" he inquired.

Baber quoted from "notor- ious" remarks about Lincoln written by his former law part- ner Hem don who, Lincoln's son Robert later remarked, had grown bitter over his relation- ship with the President.

The quotes included the doubts about Lincoln's mother and Lincoln's legitimacy which had been widely circulated dur- ing the Civil War by political opponents of Lincoln and many southern sympathisers.

In refuting these "slanders," Baber traced down more than 27 members of various branches of the Hanks family named Nancy Hanks born in the 50 years following the Revolution- ary war, traveling thousands of miles to check courthouse rec- ords, church records, and com- munity folklore throughout the south and southeast.

In his talk Baber disclosed the origins o." many of the less savory stories about Lincoln's family on his mo'ner's side, through various branches of the Hanks family, and proved by fact and elimination the truth of Nancy Hanks in contrast to

th^ viimrip.- nnrl ctftriAc nflTIAlU-

ated by Herndon and others who had taken up his line of at- tack.

Baber closed with the often- quoted testimony to his mother offered later by Abraham Lin- coln when he said "All I am and all I shall ever be I owe to my beloved mother."

Mr. Baber was assisted in his program by his secretary, Mrs. Mary Lobb of Decatur, and by Mrs. Robert McKinney of Paris.

Edgar County Historical So- ciety president Joe Sanders opened the program and con- ducted a brief business meet- ing, announcing that the next meeting would be March 2. Following the program, a recep- tion was held at the church with Historical Society members of the church acting as hostesses.

Representatives of the Clark County Historical Society were guests at the meeting and re-

NANCY HANKS LINCOLN Honor Upheld By Historical Research

NANCY HANKS

If Nancy Hanks came back as a ghost, Seeking news of what she loved most, She'd ask first "Where's my son? What's happened to Abe? What's he done?"

"Poor little Abe, left a.il alone Except for Tom, who's a rolling stone; He was only nine, the year I died. I remember still how hard he cried."

"Scraping along in a little shack, With hardly a shirt to cover his back, And a prairie wind to blow him down, Or pinching times if he went to town."

"You wouldn't know about my son? Did he grow tall? Did he have fun? Did he learn to read? Did he get to town? Do you know his name? Did he get on?"

This poem was written by Rosemary Benet. ( 1898- 1962, Stephen Vincent's wife). Nancy Hanks was Abraham Lincoln's mother (1784-1818). It is made dramatic through the person of Nancy Hanks herself who inquires plaintively after her son, whose greatness she was never to know.

NANCY HANCKS.

What Slie Tang lit Lincoln to Do — In- fill e no e of Womeji iai .the Political | World.

Lincoln was once asked if he thought that woman had influenced the political : history of the world.

"Yes, I do," replied he. "Nancy \ Hanks taught me 'to do what I thought was right and keep on doing- it — and I •have an idea that her son is going to make history."

It has fallen to the lot of woman to mot only influence the world through her offspring, but to -actually change and mold destiny with her own soft hands.

When Joan of Arc stood 'before the i King-, Charles VII. recognized that he had bsfore hiinuia woman who could lead. But Joan of Arc- was an extremist. Other women have changed the political | history of the country and have altered the destiny of kings in a softer manner and have come out triumphant and happy at the time when Joan of Arc with less diplomacy was giving- her life for her principles. And yet Joan of Arc was not the only French woman to suf- fr a terrible death for the cause which she believed to he right.

Nearly three centuries and a quarter after the little peasant heroine was hurned at the .stake hy the English there was born in Paris a iittie girl who was destined to suffer equally as cruel a fate in the very bloom of her woman- hood. This little girl was Manon Fhlippon, or Madame Roland, as she is

KNOWN IN HISTORY. Half infidel, half Christian, she was not only a part of, hut was the very center of that political body known as the Gi- rondists. Her counsels to its leaders and the impulse she gave to their move- ments formed an awful current in the storm that hurst over France in 1789, and deluged it with a rain of blood.

But further mention cannot be made of Mme. Roland here, for the names of a few of those who molded the destiny )

;vf France more happily must be noted. Conspicuous among these stands Mme. de Stael, the greatest woman writer of her age, if not, indeed, the greatest France has ever known, who struggled so heroically to reconcile England and France, and who, on account of her talents and very great political influ- ence, was exiled from Paris by the jeal- ous and tyrannical Napoleon — an act which he lived to regret, and in after years would have given anything to re- peal.

To this list can be added Mme. de Maintenon, the uncrowned though vir- tual Queen of France! and Mme. Re- camier, whose political influence is dis- puted by many historians on the ground that her ehiefest claim to fame lay in her marvelous beauty. There are many others who cannot now be referred to, tout even if these were all, France would have done her share toward producing women whose deeds adorn history. GREAT QUEENS. In our day little Wilhelmina of Hol- j land, now in her nineteenth year and i grown to a woman's dignity, threatens to be a great power on the earth. She has taken Holland's toy navy and added to it many ships; the cruisers of Hol- land are now being constructed and the waters of The Hague will soon be re- stored to their old-time gayety. She will ply her merchant ships between Java, Borneo and Sumatra; and will so alter the political history of the country that, ! at its present rate, Holland will soon be 1 ranked as one of the great powers. I The good old Queen who sits on Eng- | land's throne changed that country ais decidedly as though she had altered the' textuTe of its soil. On her accession, in 1837, she whitewashed t.ie court that had been the scene of Mary's joys and sorrows, and of the fruitful though by no means faultless reign of Queen Bess, and established a stricter court eti- quette. This is also the court over which the well-meaning though weak Queen Anne had reigned, but which was, many claim, actually ruled by Sa- rah, Duchess of Marlborough, one of the most famous women politicians England has ever produced.

The Princess Bismarck changed the political history of France unwittingly and but for her the Franco-Pruss is war might never have existed. Wo.mi create history, when they least '3usp; i fhpms- lives nf creation, and thev alter

destiny when most unmindful of their deed. Bismarck was unfriendly tu France, but the Empress Eugenie hoped with her beauty to influence him so that the little trouble with France and Germany might be smoothed over. She therefore invited the old German Prince and his wife to visit the Court of France, a.nd the Prince and Princess Bismarck arrived in great state at the Tuilleries.

BISMARCK AND EUGENIE. That evening there was a grand re- ception, and Eugenie received the guests in a gown which made her so rav- ishingly lovely that even Prince Bis- marck, German, stolid and in love with his wife, stood and gazed upon her with admiration. And Eugenie was not siow to observe the effect of her beauty upon him. She called him to her side, and Bismarck came with his wife upon his arm.

Now, the Princess Bismarck was tall, and gaunt, and ugly, and her feet were generous. As she walked she showed a great deal of sole. While Bismarck stood talking with ; Eugenie, an audible titter was heard along the line of ladies. Bismarck, who was quick as a flash, f ollo wed the glance of their eyes and saw them rest upon the feet of his wife.

That settled the matter. vThe political history of France \vas altered from that moment. A year later when Paris was besieged Bismarck himself fired a can- non over the ramparts, and those who J were near him heard him shout: "Take that for the feet of the Princess Bis- I marck!" The -slight was avenged.

Jenny Lind is accredited with having once saved the Old Whig party. A po- I lit leal opponent was plotting against the Whigs, and was about to put in op- eration a machine for stuffing the bal- lot box on election day. Happ?ning into the New York Concert Garden, where Jenny Lind was singing, he saw her clasp her little hands in the choir gallery and sing in matchless fashion, •'I Know that My Redeemer Liveth." That bit of song affected him, as it af- fected everybody else in the house, and when he went home he burnt up the bal- lot stuffer. He boasted of it in after years, though the election went against his party.— Philadelphia Times.

THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT

15

TVancy ^anks,

^ the Mother of<j imcoen

One of the men was T^iancy's brother.

was Tom Lincoln.

The other

NANCY HANKS was not quite nine years old when her grandfather Joseph Hanks died. She had had an important place in the his- tory of the Hanks family since her first arrival, but most of it the neighbors did not know or bother about. She was born back in Virginia and came to Rolling Fork as a baby, and had been accepted as a member of the family without any necessity for much explanation. But she was undeniably there, and when the group of relatives and neighbors assembled round the open grave of Joseph Hanks that day in late winter of 1793, there was no other child present. It was a group of grown folk, or of folk nearly grown, and little Nancy.

Little Nancy was quite distinct from her young aunt Nancy, who was still in her early teens. The family had two Nancys and one Nannie, for by that pet name Old Man Joe Hanks called his aged wife Ann.

The death of her grandfather wrought no immediate change in the daily life of little Nancy Hanks. Spring came, and the flowers were fragrant up and down the shores of Rolling Fork ; they bloomed abundantly also along Pottinger's Creek which flowed in on the Hanks side, and up the steeper shores of Knob Creek, which flowed out of the knobs on the opposite

By WILLIAM E. BARTON

lUuftrated by GERALD VAN DER HEYDEN

side. Nancy's childhood life was not one of hardship. She had her daily tasks to perform, but the heavy work was cared for by her uncles and aunts. Her Uncle Joe and Aunt Nancy were not too old to play with her, and the others were considerate. Whatever the faults of the Hanks family, its members were loyal to one another. Except for one thing, the year that followed her grandfather's death might have been rather a cheerful one. Her grandmother became despondent, and very homesick for Virginia.

It was not the more recent Virginia home on Patterson's Creek she longed for; that had never seemed like home to her. She wanted to be back in the old North Farnham parish where she had been born, and where her old friends still lived. Day by day, for a whole year, she moaned and sorrowed about it, and then the children held a council, and arranged to send her back, and young Joe was to go with her.

William and his wife, Elizabeth Hall, stood ready to buy the farm, which under the will of the deceased Joseph was to belong to the widow during her life, and then to the youngest

son. Joseph and his mother, Ann, assigned their rights to William, and a suitable financial arrangement was reached. The old home was still to be home for the other members of the family until their separate plans should carry them away to homes of their own. This would not be long for some of them. Mary was about to marry Jesse Friend, and the older sons were ap- proaching matrimonial arrangements with young women of the neighborhood. Elizabeth was old enough to earn her own way and look out for herself. The daughter Nancy would be cared for by her sisters and by William's wife.

Little Nancy was the only problem. William's wife, Elizabeth, was assum- ing as many motherly functions as a bride might fairly be asked to under- take. Grandmother Hanks did not think it wise to take so small a child as Nancy back across the mountains with her to Virginia where she herself might have so short a time to live and care for the little girl. It was decided that Nancy should go to her own mother, Lucy Hanks Sparrow.

If Grandmother Ann Hanks had decided that she needed little Nancy as a staff for her old age, and that the little girl must accompany her back to Virginia, the history of the United States would have been seriously modi- fied,

16

THE DEARBORN

The home of Henry and Lucy Sparrow was in Mercer County, a rather long day's ride on horseback from the Rolling Fork home of Grandfather Joseph Hanks, but it was a cheerful ride. The time was spring, a year and more after her grand- ( father's death, and the road had no rough hills or dangerous fords. The Sparrow home was a comfortable one, and little Nancy had a suitable place in it.

Yet there was something of constraint in the welcome, and Nancy did not wholly understand it. She did not quite belong there, and if the fault was hers, she did not know it.

H,

.ERE she was no longer 'Little Nancy.' There was no big Nancy from whom she needed to be distinguished. There was no one else who was older than herself, except only her mother and her stepfather. On the other hand, there were two small children, and Nancy was their nursemaid. She had suddenly grown up.

Her very name was changed. The neighbors soon forgot the necessity of distinguishing between Mrs. Sparrow's younger and older children, and the little girl who had been Nancy Hanks became the big girl, Nancy Sparrow.

Another baby was coming, and did come, to Lucy Sparrow, and her sister Elizabeth Hanks came over from Nelson County to remain with her a few weeks. This sister attracted the attention of Thomas Sparrow, Henry's brother. Eliza- beth did not return to the old Nelson County home, but married Thomas Spar- row and remained in Mercer.

This marriage brought another change to Nancy Hanks, and she went to live with her aunt and new uncle, Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow. The only explana- tion made to her was that her Aunt Elizabeth wanted company, but Nancy understood in some vague way that her mother, though loving her, was glad to have her in the other home, and not in her own.

The name Hanks fell further away from her. Whether with her mother or her aunt, she was called Nancy Sparrow. The neighbors fell easily into this habit, and her relatives were quite willing that it should be so.

A.

LND now occurred a strange shifting of relationships. Gradually Nancy's mother became her aunt, and her aunt became her mother.

So Nancy Hanks, or Nancy Sparrow, as they more frequently called her, blossomed into young womanhood, and she did not look back on her youth as a time of either poverty or disgrace. She knew, of course, long before she became of age, the whole story of her birth, and at times it cast a shadow over her mind. But her mother, Lucy, was held in in- creasing respect in Mercer County, and her foster mother, Elizabeth, was re- spected everywhere.

Nancy's services were in frequent de- mand, especially in Mercer and Washing-

ton counties, which were older and richer than Hardin, and when she was not thus employed, she had a com- fortable and cheerful home with her foster parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow.

The level aft- ernoon sun was sifting its rays through the gold- en shade of the beech trees and lighting up the shed-room where Betsy Sparrow had set up her loom. Nancy was on the porch, spinning. The dogs barked, and two men rode up to the fence and called. Betsy looked out of the door and hurried to the fence. One of the men was her brother Jos- eph Hanks. The other was intro- duced as Joe's friend, Tom Lin- coln.

Thomas Spar- row appeared, welcomed Joe, and was intro- duced to Tom, and the three men went to the barn and stabled the horses. Then they went to the house and greeted Nancy.

Uncle Joe ex- pressed amaze- ment at the way little Nancy had grown to woman- hood, and re- membered that when he left with his mother for Virginia she had not been more than knee-high to a toad, which was not very accurate, for she had been tall even as a little girl, but that was the ac- credited measure for such cases. And in due time, Mr. Tom Lincoln was properly pre- sented to Joe Hanks' niece, Miss Nancy Hanks. That evening, after little Dennis had been put to bed, the five grown people sat around the fire and told each other many things.

Joe had remained in Virginia till hi! mother died. She had been glad to be b^ but not so glad as she expected- to oe Things had changed, even in old Virginia Her old friends had died off, and hei relatives, while bidding her welcome, hac families of their own and thought her owr children were the ones who should havt cared for her.

Her own children did care for her. Joe stayed with her in Virginia, as long as she lived, and then returned to Kentucky, still unmarried. No one could say he had failed to care for his mother. But Vir- ginia was no such place as Kentucky for a man who had his own way to make.

He had picked up carpentry as a trade, and was hewing timbers for mills, and do- ing such work as was called for in his vocation. It was that particularly which had brought him into friendly relations with Tom Lincoln. Tom owned a farm over on Mill Creek, about forty miles away, and he had a mother and a married sister living there. But he had found,

17

after trial, that farming was lonely business, so he was working as a carpenter in Elizabethtown, the county seat. Now and then he earned a little money from the sheriff, serving as guard at the jail.

The most important words that were spoken by the fire that night were not those of Joe, relating his adventures to his sister and her husband, nor yet any- thing that Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sparrow had to tell him, but were those certain unrecorded words, and acts more eloquent than words, that passed between Tom Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.

They made no undue haste about their approach but they took a good look at each other. He was twenty-six, of medium height, solidly built, with hair so darkly brown it was almost black, hair cut around straight on a level with the bottom of his ears and not shingled up the back, and eyes that were gray, and now and then kindled with the love of fun. She was twenty-two, tall, well-pro- portioned, with dark skin and eyes. She had a high forehead, and possessed a good command of language. Her hands were skilled, and she had a good voice and could sing the old ballads.

Tom and Nancy did not say much, but they looked at each other, and neither was blind. Joe interrupted their observation now and then to ask Tom to confirm some statement about Joe's horse. But if anyone had had money with which to gamble that night, there was a safer wager possible than any that depended even upon the horseman- ship of Joe Hanks. Tom Lincoln was riding to win. And in due time he won.

No formal invitations were issued to the wedding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Someone who was riding from Spring- field to Elizabethtown conveyed a message to Joseph Hanks, and so to Thomas Sparrow and William Hanks, and Grandmother Bathsheba Lincoln, and there were ways enough of sending word to friends in Mercer and Nelson counties.

We do not know just who were present of the relatives of Thomas and Nancy.

18

THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT

August 27, 1927

His brothers and their families lived near- by. It would have been a long ride for his mother and the daughter and son-in- law with whom she lived, but in that season it was not an impossible ride. Certainly Thomas and Betsy Sparrow and Jesse and Polly Friend, and Levi Hall and his wife, Nancy Hanks, the aunt of the bride, were within a comfortable day's ride. Weddings in the backwoods were more than weddings. They were great as- semblies of sundered friends who hungered for social relationship.

We CAN picture the scene on the day of the wedding. The Berry house, a double, hewn-log structure, fronted the road a short distance from the ford of Beech Fork. A few houses were near, and the neighborhood was sometimes called Beechland and at other times Poortown. No reasonable ex- planation has been offered for the latter name, for the farmers were rather more than ordinarily prosperous. It may be that some of them were tenants of the Berrys, and that their cabins were small as com- pared with the two double log houses of Richard and Frank Berry. Below the Dick Berry House and near the road was, and still is, an excellent spring where each arrival refreshed himself, and the men made their outdoor toilet after their ride.

People were arriving nearly all day, and preparations were going forward on an ex- tensive scale. The wedding feast was no matter of light refreshments, but a barbecue. Kettles were boiling and ovens were reeking the whole day long. A 'snack' was provided for the guests who arrived before noon, and it did not minish the provision for evening. The Berrys were well-to-do, and food was cheap. There was no market for surplus perishable food, and the actual cost of what people were to eat was hardly a matter to be considered.

There was no lack of help. The Berrys owned slaves, and so did the more prosperous of their neighbors, not even excepting the preacher, Jesse Head, whom modern authors have credited with the antislavery senti- ments of the Lincoln family. There was help enough inside the house and out.

There is no occasion to exalt the wedding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks into a social event of high rank. Neither have we any reason to think of it as less than the ordinary wedding of the period in its appeal to the friends of the bride and groom and to those who arranged for the marriage. It was just a good, " *.

average June wed- - »

ding, and we know ^ what such wed- dings were.

.Not, certainly, be- cause any of them were of his church, but prob- ably because he was a neighbor and friend, and because his work as cabinetmaker kept him within easy reach of the courthouse, while preachers who rode cir- cuits were not always to

be depended upon, the minister selected for the occasion was the Reverend Jesse Head.

Rather late in the afternoon, he rode up. We know the color of the mare on which he rode; she was gray. Later, by natural in- crease and some swapping, he owned, at times, as many as three horses, but at this time he paid taxes on one gray mare, and three slaves, the slaves being a mother and two children. He did not own the husband of Mrs. Jane Head's cook; that colored man. belonged to a neighbor. Jesse Head was later custodian and guardian of certain free Negro children, and so a trusted friend of their interests, but he was no abolitionist. He edited a paper which did not hesitate to advertise rewards for runaway slaves. On that subject he was neither ahead of his time nor behind it. But most of the preach- ers opposed slavery, and he did not.

He was recognized as he approached, for his gray mare and her rider were well known. Willing hands would have taken the bridle rein from him as he dismounted, but he personally saw to the removal of the saddle. It was summer, and a horse's back might easily scald, and a sore-backed horse is no asset to a backwoods preacher.

Thanks to a ribald jingle then current, we know how he looked:

His nose is long and his hair is red, And he goes by the name of Jesse Head.

Abraham "Lin- coin's first home.

He was no saintly, mealy-mouthed man, this Jesse Head. He was a fighter of the devil and of desperadoes and of Calvinists and later of Whigs. He could eject a rowdy from a service, and thrash a bully till he cried for mercy, and then kneel with him, and with tears streaming from his eyes, pray that God would save the bully's miserable soul. He had a good library for his time, and he was something of a lover of books. Not everyone loved him. He made many enemies. But everyone respected him. Well might that company assembled on Beech Fork rise up and pay reverent re- gard to Jesse Head. Dogmatic, contro- versial, censorious, he was; but mightily in earnest, desperately sincere, and utterly without fear of Whigs, Calvinists, Baptists, rowdies or the devil. He did his own worthy share in saving the wilderness from godless- ness and savagery.

The wedding was at sunset and the feast and the dance followed. There were the good old tunes, 'Vilikins and his Dinah,' 'Turkey in the Straw,' 'The White Cockade,' 'Money- musk,' and 'Hey, Betty Martin, Tiptoe, Tiptoe.' The fiddler rosined his bow and drew it lovingly across the eager catgut. There was enough to eat and more than enough to drink. It was a gay and festive night.

The first home of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln after their marriage was in Eliza- bethtown, county seat of Hardin County. Thither they rode from Washington County not long after the marriage service. There was no occasion for haste. They may have remained to an 'infare' given by the Lin- colns. While the bride's family or friends furnished the wedding, the groom's rela- tives often followed with that reception of the new couple into their clan by an 'infare' which was often quite as noisy as the wedding. Dennis Hanks related that shortly after the wedding the bride and groom visited Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, and it would have been very strange if they had not done so. Their home was on the way to Elizabeth- town, and there was every good reason why such a visit should have been made.

Some time in 1808 Thomas and Nancy moved from Eliza- bethtown, and on December 12, 1808, he bought from Isaac Bush two hundred acres of land, in- cluding the Sinking Spring, and the cabin which just two months later was to become famous. But when the purchasers of the Lincoln farm, a century later, made their investiga- tion prior to the trans- fer of that property to the United States Gov- ernment, they discov- ered evidence, not wholly certain, but to them highly probable, that Thomas and Nancy were already living in the neighborhood some ten months be- fore Abraham Lincoln was born.

The home which for one single crop-

THE

DEARBORN INDEPENDENT 19

season they are believed to have occupied was located in the 'Plum Orchard.' The cabin in the Plum Orchard was a temporary home. Tom Lincoln was tired of lawsuits, and of the kind of work that led to litigation, and Nancy wanted a home nearer to her foster parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Spar- row. And so, until possession of the home at Sinking Spring could be obtained, they lived for a few months in the Plum Orchard.

Thomas was not yet through with his lawsuits, and had to make rather frequent trips back to Elizabethtown, but usually he was gone only for the day, and Nancy awaited his return with glad anticipation.

Here, in May, 1808, while the wild crab apples were in their glory, and the air was full of their fragrance, Nancy felt the thrill of a new expectancy. She whispered her secret to her husband, and to Elizabeth Sparrow, and they all were glad, and the crab apples blushed happily. This time, Nancy hoped she would bear a son.

There was a neighborhood picnic in the woods of the Richard Creel place, in the summer of 1861, and the lunch baskets were assembled at the Sinking Spring. During the luncheon there was discussion about the cabin that had once stood there, and which had been removed, and whose logs some people present believed were still in the walls of a barn in the vicinage. The occupants of the cabin, Thomas Lincoln and his wife, had owned this very spring, and used its water; and it was here that their boy, Abraham Lincoln, was born.

It seemed a very remarkable fact that the man who was at that minute sitting in the White House and directing the great war, in which Kentucky was likely to be in- volved on the one side or the other, should have been born in this very spot, in a cabin, almost exactly where they were sitting, and that he and his parents should have drunk of and bathed in the water of this very spring.

Some one present said he had heard that when the Lincolns lived in that place, they were a 'no 'count' family, and perhaps not even married.

Aunt Peggy Walters answered the im- putation with vigor.

'Mis' Lincoln was a fine woman,' she said. 'I knew her well. We lived just three- quarters of a mile over here, and I was here right often. She was a good woman, and nobody ever spoke a word against her while they lived here, nor against her husband, either.'

Aunt Peggy Walters was a woman of character, related to half the people present, and her word had weight.

'Weren't you here when he was born, Aunt Peggy?' asked one of the younger women.

'I most certainly was,' replied Aunt Peggy, 'and I remember it just as well as if it had been yesterday.'

Plied with questions, Aunt Peggy rose and hobbled about for a few steps, for she had a broken hip and had to use a crutch; it wearied her to sit long in one position. If she was to tell a long story, she must make herself more nearly comfortable.

She seated herself again, laid down her crutch, and told in her own language, which in the main was correct language, this story of the birth of Nancy Lincoln's baby:

'I was twenty years old, then, and help- ing to bring a baby into the world was more of an event to me than it became afterward. But I was married young, had a baby of my

own, and I had helped mother, who, as you know, was quite famous as a granny- woman, and I had gone several times to help when I was sent for.

. 'It was Saturday afternoon, I remember, when Tom Lincoln sent over and asked me to come, and I got up behind the boy that rode across to fetch me, and I rode across to the cabin that then stood here. It was a short ride, less than a mile. It was winter, but it was mild weather, and I don't think there was any snow. If there was any then, it wasn't much, and no snow fell that night. It was a clear night. I was here all night. They sent for me quite as soon as there was any need, for when I got there nothing much was happening. They sent for her two aunts, Mis' Sparrow and Mis' Friend, and these both came, but they lived about two miles away, so I was there before them, and we all had quite a spell to wait, and we got everything ready that we could.

'They were poor folks, but so were most of their neighbors, and they didn't lack anything they needed. Nancy had a good feather bed under her; it wasn't a goose- feather bed; hardly anyone had that kind then, but good hen feathers. And she had blankets enough. There was a little girl there, two years old. Her name was Sarah. She went to sleep before much of anything happened.

'Well, there isn't much that a body can tell about things of that kind. Nancy had about as hard a time as most women, I reckon, easier than some and maybe harder than a few. It all came along kind of slow, but everything was regular and all right. The baby was born just about sunup, on Sunday morning. Nancy's two aunts took the baby and washed him and dressed him, and I looked after Nancy. That's about all there is to tell. I remember it better than I do some cases that came later because I was young, and hadn't had so much experience as I had afterward. But I remember it all right well.

'Oh, yes, and I remember one other thing. After the baby was born, Tom came and stood beside the bed and looked down at Nancy, lying there, so pale and so tired, and he stood there with that sort of a hang- dog look that a man has, sort of guilty like, and he says to me, "Are you sure she's all right, Mis' Walters?" And Nancy kind of stuck out her hand and reached for his, and said, "Yes, Tom, I'm all right." And then she said, "You're glad it's a boy, Tom, aren't you? So am I." '

Of THE actual naming of the child we have no account. None is needed. When Thomas Lincoln was a lad of six he saw his father, Captain Abraham Lincoln, shot down by an Indian. He wanted to per- petuate that name and did so. The name did not quite fit the first child, and for her the name Sarah appeared the best available substitute; the reserved name was ready for the next baby. They called the child Abraham Lincoln.

Several years later Tom Lincoln erected a new house, eighteen feet square, and with a loft high enough to provide room for beds, one of which was occupied by Abraham, now a lad of eight years. In that cabin he was to spend the remaining years of his boyhood.

The half-faced camp did not remain un- occupied. Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came on to be near their foster daughter, and made their home near the Lincolns. Scarcely had

this couple moved out of the hillside place than Levi and Nancy Hanks Hall came on, and they in turn occupied the camp until they had provided themselves a permanent home. The rude shack sheltered in succes- sion three families known to us, and quite possibly several others afterward.

For two years Nancy Hanks Lincoln dwelt in Indiana, and saw some approach to comfort in the conditions of her home. Gradually the cleared area of land and 'deadening' around the cabin widened, and the acreage of corn increased. The stock of poultry and of bacon grew, and the 'pinch- ing times,' while not far pushed back into the woods, were not at the door as they were at the beginning. Conditions appeared to promise a reasonably comfortable future for the family.

The autumn of 1818 brought to south- ern Indiana a terrible sickness, afflicting both man and beast. The cattle were first to suffer from it, and as it was found to have been their milk that carried it to their human owners, it was called the 'milk- sickness.' A number of people in the neighborhood where the Lincolns lived con- tracted the disease and died. Levi and Nancy Hall died, and so did Thomas and Betsy Sparrow. Two uncles and aunts, one couple being her foster parents, were swept away as with a flood. Then Nancy herself contracted the disease. There was no phy- sician within thirty-five miles. We have the testimony of a neighbor who was an eye- witness that Abraham and his sister were faithful in waiting on their mother, doing what they could for her. 'She struggled on,' says this neighbor, 'a good Christian woman, and died on the seventh day after she was taken sick.' The mother knew that she was going to die. She was very weak, and the children leaned over her while she gave her last messages.

Placing her feeble hand on Abe's head, she told him to be kind and good to his father and sister. To both she said, 'Be good to one another,' expressing a hope that they might live, as they had been taught by her, 'to love their kindred and worship God.' Thus, at the age of thirty-five, on October 5, 1818, died this madonna of the backwoods, the mother of Abraham Lincoln.

i t *

Biographers have been busy with Abraham Lincoln for the past year or two, but little has been written about Nancy Hanks, his mother. Her childhood years, courtship and mar- riage to Tom Lincoln constitute an intensely human story which is an essential part of American history. William E. Barton, Lincoln's biog- rapher, has collected many interesting facts about Nancy Hanks. She had a somewhat pillar-to-post existence when a child, but after her marriage showed herself a good and true woman, (p. 15)

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TKe MotHer of Lincoln

From the Oration by General John C. Black at the Dedication of a Monument Over the Grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln

And now a great throng is here who have come to testify of their affection for her, and who have singled out this one woman for this unusual honor. Well might her simple spirit, if recalled to this scene, bid us leave her slumber unbroken and her ashes again to the urn of oblivion. Well may all inquire why, after many years, this stately concourse? Why the recall of these aged companions? Why this muster of these heroic veterans? Why these hon- ored women? Why should the great state itself turn back through the loftiest century of time to stand in the persons of its gov- ernor and officials in splendid ceremony about a wilderness grave? And with sol- emn voice we answer: "That justice may be done; that wrong may be righted; that truth eternal as the reign of God may be established. We come, O. woman and mother, here to build our memorial to thee. Thine earthly garments were damp with the dews of the wilderness; thy feet were

torn by the thorns of thy pathwa r" eyes dimmed by the tears of thy but in thine arms thou didst bea' thy bosom thou didst nourish tin thy sacrifices, the child of thy toil master of his time, the beloved of to be, the servant of justice and I tor of the oppressed! And so, own sake and for thy child's, w to do this fitting honor."

1 have often wondered whelhei Thomas and Nancy, fled from t .slavery, with conscious knowlc

hard Hi sentt ways a st< seldo enjoj ami know

oeiug on n

simply from conditions not und not the less intolerable. But b ie iJ may, "He arose and took the \oung chini and his mother and departed hither." Here in Indiana they rested; here she gave that child, in the simple cabin now gone to ruin, his first lessons; here in his father's pres- mce she sowed the seed of truth and jus- tice afterward to mature a mighty harvest.

Well, it may have been; the world beyond has Its own mysteries; so to the living they will forever continue, and so we leave them —one hers In Indiana, two In Illinois; in the grasp and bon« of the Union their lives preserved we leave them— son and father and mother In equal honor and m eternal peace. ^9HMP|^^ml.|

Here she stood and pointed upward, little comprehending, if at all, the future that awaited. We cannot say she did not see anything of that future. What mother that" bends above an American babe was ever wholly blind to the possibilities? Duller, indeed, than any mother must she have been not to have known that her cabin- born child was not equal in advantages with the child of the plantation; less than a mother, had she not rebelled at the dis- tinction and sought to obviate it, but in any event here she came, and, having placed his feet on freedom's soil, she yielded her blameless life back to the grave.

And this is all her story — a short and simple annal of the poor. But the years passed on, the nation was in the throes of a great war for its prolonged existence; at its head was the child of this woman, and over against him the child of the planta- tion. The struggle was to decide, as the chieftain himself said, whether a nation dedicated to liberty could live, or whether a government of the people, for the people and by the people should perish from the earth. Was that leader equal to the task? Could he save a nation for righteousness and liberty? Whence was his training, and who had laid the moral foundations on which he should stand in this awful strug- gle? We see that son bowed by the weight of cares such as rarely have fallen upon human shoulders. He wielded the power and enjoyed the affection of a great people. Armies moved at his command and navies obeyed his orders. Disasters recurring filled the earth with loudest clamors against him. Calumny belied him and hate spied upon his every act; but ever louder and louder sounded the bugles of advan- cing victory, and in the midst of this vast strife, from the stress of public trials and the pain of personal woes, we hear the worn and weary President, matchless orator, great civic leader, emancipator, patriot — ■ he whose lips spoke rebellion down and liberty to the stars — we hear him declare, "All that I am or may be I owe to my sainted mother." High testimony this and most exalted witness.

And at last the great war drew to ita triumphal close. Its mightiest actor, too, approached his end. Behold him sur- rounded by his friends and advisers; he is telling of all that he hopes for the land of his love. On him so speaking falls the melancholy which he has inherited from his mother, and he tells of the dream which, often occurring, has always been a har- binger of some great grave event. Be- fore victory or before disaster had that dream come to him, "A shadowy ship bears me rapidly toward a shadowy shore."

1 sometimes fancy that on the dark barge of iln^ President's dream there waited for

landing 'niidsl (hi •ml guards and si before, and w lio him, this woman [his lallesi and

dense Ihrong of ilesmen win) had hail returned to l his v\ ildcrness date-lies! of jjiem

this woman whom today »t honor

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA

3 7

his errand of kindness. It was a bright and sunny Sabbath morn- ing, when, due notice having been sent around through all the region, men, women and children gathered from far and near to hear the funeral sermon of Nancy Lincoln. There was the hardy forest ranger, come from his far-wandering quests to hear. There were farmers and their families, borne hither in rude and home-

THE BELATED FUNERAL SERMON

The good preacher told of the virtues and the patiently borne sufferings of the departed mother of Abraham Lincoln.

made carts, new-comers, some of them, and homesick for their distant birthplaces. Two hundred of them, all told, some on foot and some on horseback, and others drawn m ox-carts. All were intent on the great event of the season — the preaching of Nancy Lincoln's funeral sermon.

The waiting congregation was grouped around on "down trees,"

38

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

stumps and knots of bunch-grass, or on wagon tongues, waiting for the coming of the little procession. The preacher led the way from the Lincoln cabin, followed by Thomas Lincoln, his son Abraham, his daughter Sarah and . . . Dennis Hanks, bereft of father and mother, and now a member of the Lincoln household. Tears shone on the sun-browned cheeks of the silent settlers as the good preacher told of the virtues and the patiently borne sufferings of the. departed mother of Abraham Lincoln. And every head was bowed in reverential solemnity as he lifted up his voice in prayer for the motherless children and the widowed man. To Abraham, listening as he did to the last words that should be said over the grave of his mother, this was a very memorable occasion. He had fulfilled a pious duty in bringing the preacher to the place where she was laid, and as the words, wonderful to him, dropped from the speaker's lips, he felt that this was the end, at least, of a lovely and gentle life. He might be drawn into busy and trying scenes hereafter, and he might have many and mighty cares laid on him, but that scene in the forest by the lonely grave of his mother was never to be forgotten.

Abraltam Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 21.

"What is Home without a Mother?"

The loss of his mother was the first great grief of young Abra- ham, then not quite ten years old. The love of reading acquired through her inspiration and help was of itself enough, in his con- dition, to justify his saying:

"I owe all that I am or hope to be to my sainted mother."

His recollection of her seemed always to be quite clear and vivid, and he ever spoke of her with tenderness and reverence.

What could be done as housekeeper by a girl of twelve, Sarah did for more than a year; but a matron's care was too visibly lacking, and the father decided to ask the help and hand of one he had early known as Sally Bush, now living in widowhood at Eliza- bethtown. She had married Daniel Johnston, the jailer, who died, leaving three children and a little property

"His widow continued to live here until the second of December, 1 81 9. Thomas Lincoln returned to this place on the first day of December, and inquired for the residence of Widow Johnston. She lived near the clerk's office. I was the clerk, and informed him

Last Saturday I was thiukiug of Abraham Lincoln; today I think of his mother. And I remember that the strain of sadness so pronounced in the son was said to be dominant in the mother as well. Reading of the woman, cast in a fine mold by nature and in a hard, rough setting by the fortunes of life, it does seem a pity that it was not given to her, as to the mother of Washington, to find herself the mother of a man recognized as great. Or, missing that, that some strong inner consciousness was not at work to whisper to her that her boy was to pass out from the little cabin home and become a man among men and a leader of all.

Lincoln has been referred to as one of the best examples of a diamond in the rough that the world ever has seen, and his mother — what of her?

really great and with those who high up without being great at . , would she have displayed some otl -r characteristics very pronounced in her son? Would she have been unacquaint- ed with courtly manners and have re- mained in royal disregard of courtly conventionalities and yet have disarm- ed criticism by reason of her native j sweetness and straightforwardness of manner, as did the great-hearted, sim- ple-mannered son?

To my mind, one of the things very revealing of the strong fiber that made the untutored boy from the backwoods slip into the highest place was that he did not try to borrow any unnatural polish, did not try to pose, just let his own nobility of soul shine through, his uncolored self.

It is strange to picture her, a woman of naturally fine instincts and virtues that would have adorned any station, struggling to fit in with the wild settlement and the rugged people about her. Not that she was much more than a diamond in the rough herself, so far as education and things of like import were concerned, but she did the best she could with the limited tools at hand.

Lincoln's father could neither read nor write, but his mother read what- ever came to hand and is said to have possessed more tnan Ordinary intel- lect. And the home, rough and ready as it looked, indicated a degree of taste and a love of beauty which with j some women will find expression no j matter what or where the setting.

A markedly gentlewoman, and not; hardy of physique — yet the means of j existence came only alter struggle, and j she was trained in the use of the rifle j and the heavy tools of the backwoods farmer. Familiar with the distaff and the spinniug-wheel and all the work in the home, there were times when j she must kill the wild game of the woods, dress it and prepare it as food for the table.

Bui with all the toil of her busy, life, Ihe found time to teach her boy to read and write, and, more than that, to im- press upon him the need of justice and truth and Integrity, which were very flear to her and for which the boy, grown into the man, was noted all his tife. He was only nine years old when his mother slipped away without Knowing the rest, but Lincoln, so we ftre told, never forgot his love for his mother and always connected these Wonderful virtues with her. And sure- ay they were abundantly passed along, from mother to son.

The woman, In her early years, be- fore the roughness, the hardness* the anxiety came to mar it, possessed more than a fair amount of beauty, wlilch, according to many vivid accounts, was not carried along by the son.

But it always has been a source of wonder why anyone could call a man painfully homely when he possessed a bmile so captivating as quite to trans- figure the plain face, and eyes that spoke for themselves. Or why he could be pronounced awkward when, all in a flash, as a public speaker, a new show- ing of dignity and of dormant grace would come stealing over him and he would hold his listeners enthralled.

One reads of the queer, falsetto vole* and the ungainly appearance that made so disappointing an impression at first, and then always comes the explana- tion that the quaint tones became clear, the strange manner thrilling, and the (man stood revealed. And many a time in the reading, I have wished it were j possible to stand face to face with homeliness and ungainltness of that na- ture. For it seems strange that among 'the strong figures that have gone into I the making of our history, the one that is pronounced the homeliest and the jmost ungainly also should be counted the most lovable ard loving.

FRANCESCA.

j Had her life gone on and had she; teen called upon to mingle with the'

HEED

IF NANCY HANKS

// Nancy Hanks fisJ-'fc**

Came back as a ghost, ' ^—

Seeking news

Of what she loved most,

She'd ask first

"Where's my son?

What's happened to Abe?

What's he done?"

Thus Stephen Vincent Benet and Rosemary, his wife, in a new book of verse refer to the mother of Abraham Lincoln. That they appreci- ate the deeper meaning of the American history all familiar with the husband's book of a few years ago, "John Brown's Body," well know. The verses in "A Book of Americans" dealing with Nancy Hanks are among the fine achieve- ments in the new volume. The idea suggests poetic insight and sympathy in rare degree. Nancy Hanks was only 35 when she died, her great son only nine. What would such a woman coning back to earth want to knew? The story of her son. Of course. So Nancy Hanks:

Did he learn to read?

Did he get to town?

Do you know his name?

Did he get on? But — the Benets were anticipated in this con- ception by the former editor of this- paper. Robert Lincoln O'Brien published in The Boston Herald oi Feb. 12, 1914, a beautiful, moving prose essay of two columns. He handled the same idea with a fine skill which has never been properly appreciated.

He represented the Spirit of the Present as in colloquy with Nancy Hanks. Her mind fills with wender as she learns what has happened since her passing from earth. Why should a splendid monument mark her grave? She had "ha'.ed to leave" her "awkward boy." He nad "seemed ailing that fall" and his father might not have known how to care for him Witn awe she hears of the place hsr son holds in the afiection of u'\ minkind— Nancy Hanks, a 'wo- man of the wilderness" buried in a "rough pine box" under the trees at P'geon Creek!

Comparisons would not be becoming, but we feel sure that Stephen and Rosemary Brnet wou'd award the highest praise to the poetic meditation written by Air. O'Brien twenty years before they put their own into verse.

WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT A MOTHER ?

OOR Tom Lincoln missed his wife as much as a less shiftless man could. Sarah and Abe, assisted by Dennis, did all that children could do for the forlorn man, but he went about aloof and disconsolate. He stayed away on longer hunts than usual, as though loath to hang around the cabin. He might have laid the floor, hung the door and put oiled paper in the one window-opening to keep out the winter's cold, but he seemed not to care. The children, accustomed to such neglect, went about their daily work and play. Dennis Hanks has told of little Abe's hunger, even then, to read and write. He tells of teaching Abe to write his name in the salt of the deer "lick" near by with a stick. Dennis had made him pens of turkey-buzzard "quills," and decocted him some briar-root ink, so the boy had learned to write.

One day the lonesome father told the children he was going to visit his former home in "Kaintuck." After he had been gone several weeks, they were surprised to see him drive up before the cabin with a four-horse team. They could hardly believe their eyes, he looked so spruce and alert. They could hardly believe their ears, either, when the brisk, happy acting man introduced them to the kind, motherly looking woman riding with him, as their new mother. He had heard that Sarah Bush, whom he had known in youth, was now a widow. She had married Jailer Johnston, of Elizabethtown. He had gone back and proposed to her, married her next day, and brought her away at once with her three children and household effects. The furniture was marvellous in the eyes of the Indiana children, for one piece was a "bureau worth forty dollars."

The advent of Sarah Bush Lincoln brought new s£* life and cheer into that neglected household. She induced even indolent Thomas Lincoln to exercise his ingenuity as a carpenter by laying the floor and filling the door and window spaces as they should have been two years before. She hung up curtains of deerskin, laid rugs of bearskin, and made the house cheery and comfortable. And the poor, motherless children were washed, combed, clothed; she made

them, as she once said, "look a little more human." They could hu<uy believe themselves

THE PASSING OF THE "ANGEL MOTHER"

FTER the Lincoln family had moved from the shed of poles into the house of logs, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow, relatives of the Hanks family, came over from Kentucky and lived in the camp, intending to build themselves a cabin. This was in 1818; the Lincolns had then lived in Indiana two years, and were yet without a comfortable home, even as hardy pioneers counted comforts. During the autumn of that year three of the two families were seized with a terrible, malignant disease, which attacked the cattle also, and was called "the milk-sick." Thomas and Betsy Sparrow died first and little Abe helped make their jde coffins, for which his father cut the lumber out of surrounding trees with his whipsaw. While ihey were doing this the poor wife and mother was taken worse. There was no doctor within 'lirty-five miles. Nancy Hanks Lincoln had suffered too much from privation, exposure and ither hardships to survive such an attack. Realizing that she had not long to live, she talked )ng and earnestly with Sarah and little Abe. They did everything they could for their darling lother, but she had not strength enough to rally. Feeling that the end was near she beckoned er children, who knelt by her bedside. Laying her thin white hands on their heads, she told them y be good to each other, take care of their father, and live so that they could meet her in heaven, ad she, who "gave us Lincoln and never knew," passed out of her hard life.

The heart-broken little family buried the wife and mother, on a knoll in the edge of the clear- lg, beside the new-made graves of her cousins Thomas and Betsy, whose deaths deprived the rphaned Dennis Hanks of his foster parents also. The Lincolns took the forlorn lad, several years older than Abe, into their own motherless family. Dennis thus became Abe's almost constant companion and it is from his memories that we have learned the little we know about Abraham Lincoln's boy- hood.

It was nearly a year before the funeral of Nancy Lincoln could be held. It has been said that the first 'etter Abraham ever wrote was to good old Parson Zlkin, back in their "old Kentucky home," to ask him « visit them next time he came within fifty miles of Prairie Fork and preach his mother's funeral sermon. This the good preacher did during the following sum- mer. Abe always blessed the memory of his "angel mother," as he had learned, while a little boy, to call

his Own mother. Abe helped make their rude coffini

" But what about the MOTHERS? Nancy Hanks created Abraham Lincoln, just as much as Wren the architect created the Cathedral of St. Paul's in London. In fact, Nancy Hanks' work was much more complete. Wren only made the PLANS —workmen and contractors built the cathedral.

Lincoln's spirit was created in Nancy Hanks' braini and her body BUILT HIS BODY.

If mothers were honored as they should be, back of every statue of Abraham Lincoln there would be a taller statue of his noble mother-a strong woman, nearly six feet high, who lived in that little wooden cabin on the frontier, with In- dians and bears around her, in her little hut with- out a window, doing all the work, splitting the wood, cooking, washing, creating that son and starting him on his way to greatness and to useful service. Is SHE not entitled to honor?

Where are the statues to Nancy Hanks Lincoln?

Where do you see the great figure in bronze, of a brave, powerful woman, holding- in her arms a little baby with these lines under it? "Erected in memory of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln, and benefactress of the United States of America?"

Lincoln's Mother

How American Historians Regard Nancy Hanks

DUNHAM WRIGHT is the son of Abraham Lincoln's cousin, Celia Hanks Wright — Celia Hanks before her marriage to Mr. John D. Wright. Celia Hanks (Wright) was the niece of Nancy Hanks (Lincoln), Abraham Lincoln's mother.

According to the "Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln," by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, Nancy Hanks, born February 5, 1784, was left an orphan at her parents' death in 1793. She married on the 12th of June, 1804, Thomas Lincoln; and her uncle, Richard Berry, became surety on the marriage bond. She became the mother of Sarah Lincoln in 1807, of Abra- ham Lincoln in 1809, and of Thomas Lincoln, a younger child, who died in babyhood. He was buried in the old cemetery near the Cave Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln was born.

Dr. Christopher Graham, who attended the wed- ding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, says, ac- cording to Miss Tarbell's history:

"I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian — and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bear-meat, venison, wild turkey, and ducks' eggs, wild and tame, so com- mon that you could buy them at two bits a bushel; maple sugar, swung on a string to bite off for coffee or whisky; syrup in big gourds; peach and honey; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in."

"Nancy Hanks," says Dr. Robert H. Browne, "was a healthy, pleasant-appearing, confiding, shapely fashioned, if not a handsome woman. She had more than an ordinary education and knowledge of affairs for her time."

"The home into which the child [Abraham Lincoln] was born," says Miss Tarbell, "was the ordinary one of the poorer Western pioneer, a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single win- dow, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which is so familiar, has been over- drawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better

authority on the life of that day, and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that "it is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in the winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home-woven 'Kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife."

This farm where Abraham Lincoln was born was on some of the poorest farm-land in the section, ac- cording to Mr. J. Roger Gore's record of the memories of Austin Gollaher, a childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln's in the region of his birth. But Thomas Lincoln had been attracted to the place by its most striking possession— a spring in a cave, from which flowed a pure cold water. However, when Abraham Lincoln was four years old the family moved away from the Cave Spring Farm, near which the baby who had died was buried, to a farm on Knob Creek, about fifteen miles away.

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, his father again moved the family northwestward to Indiana. Austin Gollaher tells us that a few days before they left their Kentucky home at Knob Creek, he and his mother, Mrs. Gollaher, and Abraham Lincoln, then a little boy, and his sister Sarah, of nine years, went with Mrs. Lincoln to say good-by to the grave of her baby, near the Cave Spring Farm.

"We went in their old spring-wagon, pulled by Mr. Keith's mule and one of my father's. Mrs. Lincoln covered the grave with wild flowers and vines we had gathered along the way. Then we all kneeled down there on the hillside, and my mother prayed while Mrs. Lincoln said good-by to the little mound under the sheltering trees. On the way back, we stopped at the old Cave Spring to get a drink of that good water; and we climbed the hill to the cabin in which Abe was born, that his mother might look on it once again before she left."

It was the last time that Nancy Hanks Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln ever saw place where the boy •s born.

"God bless my mother. All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

Lincoln s Mother

How American Historians Regard Nancy Hanks

DUNHAM WRIGHT is the son of Abraham Lincoln's cousin, Celia Hanks Wright — Celia Hanks before her marriage to Mr. John D. Wright. Celia Hanks (Wright) was the niece of Nancy Hanks (Lincoln), Abraham Lincoln's mother.

According to the "Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln," by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, Nancy Hanks, born February 5, 1784, was left an orphan at her parents' death in 1793. She married on the 12th of June, 1804, Thomas Lincoln; and her uncle, Richard Berry, became surety on the marriage bond. She became the mother of Sarah Lincoln in 1807, of Abra- ham Lincoln in 1809, and of Thomas Lincoln, a younger child, who died in babyhood. He was buried in the old cemetery near the Cave Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln wras born.

Dr. Christopher Graham, who attended the wed- ding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, says, ac- cording to Miss Tarbell's history:

"I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian — -and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bear-meat, venison, wild turkey, and ducks' eggs, wild and tame, so com- mon that you could buy them at two bits a bushel; maple sugar, swung on a string to bite off for coffee or whisky; syrup in big gourds; peach and honey; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in."

"Nancy Hanks," says Dr. Robert H. Browne, "was a healthy, pleasant-appearing, confiding, shapely fashioned, if not a handsome woman. She had more than an ordinary education and knowledge of affairs for her time."

"The home into which the child [Abraham Lincoln] was born," says Miss Tarbell, "was the ordinary one of the poorer Western pioneer, a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single win- dow, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which is so familiar, has been over- drawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better

authority on the life of that day, and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that "it is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in the winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home-woven 'Kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife."

This farm where Abraham Lincoln was born was on some of the poorest farm-land in the section, ac- cording to Mr. J. Roger Gore's record of the memories of Austin Gollaher, a childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln's in the region of his birth. But Thomas Lincoln had been attracted to the place by its most striking possession — a spring in a cave, from which tlowed a pure cold water. However, when Abraham Lincoln was four years old the family moved away from the Cave Spring Farm, near which the baby who had died was buried, to a farm on Knob Creek, about fifteen miles away.

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, his father again moved the family northwestward to Indiana. Austin Gollaher tells us that a few days before they left their Kentucky home at Knob Creek, he and his mother, Mrs. Gollaher, and Abraham Lincoln, then a little boy, and his sister Sarah, of nine years, went with Mrs. Lincoln to say good-by to the grave of her baby, near the Cave Spring Farm.

"We went in their old spring-wagon, pulled by Mr. Keith's mule and one of my father's. Mrs. Lincoln covered the grave with wild flowers and vines we had gathered along the way. Then we all kneeled down there on the hillside, and my mother prayed while Mrs. Lincoln said good-by to the lit lie mound under the sheltering trees. On the way back, we stopped at the old Cave Spring to get a drink of that good water; and we climbed the hill to the cabin in which Abe was born, that his mother might look on it once again before she left."

It was the last time that Nancy Hanks Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln ever saw place where the boy -s born.

' God bless my mother. All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

Nancy Hanks

(Written for The Herald of Feb. 12, 1911. by Robert Lincoln O'Brien, then Editor.)

Nancy Hanks — I see the calendar says it Is 1914, nearly a century after my life in the world ended. Pray tell me, spirit of the Present, whether any one mortal .remembers that I ever lived, or knows my place of burial.

The Present — Oh, yes. There is a monument over your grave at Pigeon Creek. A man named Studebaker of South Bend, Ind., went there in 1879 and spent $1000 in marking it.

Nancy Hanks — What do you mean? More money than I ever saw in my life spent on my grave, more than 60 years after I had made it! Was he a rich de- scendant of mine?

The Present — He was no relative of yours. As a matter-of-fact citizen, he thought your grave ought to be marked. Twenty-three years later the state of Indiana erected a massive monument in your honor; 10,000 school children marched in procession when it was dedi- cated. The Governor of the state, now one of the great commonwealths of the union, was there, while a distinguished general from afar, delivered the princi- pal oration. This monument cost a larger fortune than you ever knew any- one to possess. More people than you ever saw together at one time assembled. And on the pedestal, in raised letters, one may read: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln." Can there be any mistake about that? "WHAT IS THIS WONDER?"

Nancy Hanks— What is this wonder of wonders? I realized that my mortal remains, inclosed in a rough pine box, were buried under the trees at Pigeon Creek, and that no minister of religion was there to say even a prayer. I sup- posed that if anybody in all this earth of yours would be surely forgotten, and soon forgotten, it would be Nancy Hanks, the plain woman of the wilder- ness. My life was short — of only 25 years— and in it I saw little of the great world, and knew little of it, and on going out had little further to expect from it. So, I pray, break to me the meaning of this appalling mystery!

The Present— This is the 12th of Feb- ruary!

Nancy Hanks — That was the birthday of my little boy, a slender, awkward fel- low who used every night to climb a ladder of wooden pins driven into a log, up into a bed of leaves in the loft, and there to dream. Whatever became of that sad little boy? He was not very well when I left him. All that winter he seemed ailing. I hated to go away. I was afraid his father could not give the care that the frail little fellow | needed. Did you ever hear what be- came of my little 9-year-old boy out in the woods of Pigeon Creek?

THE WORLD KNOWS OF HIM

I The Present — Of course I have heard what became of him. Few have not. The people who could answer your ques- tion number hundreds of millions today. There is no land and no tongue in which the information you seek could not be supplied, and usually bv the "man in the street." Actual millions of people know that the 12th of February was the day you welcomed into your cabin in the frontier wilderness that little boy. His birthday, in 22 states of the Union, including the imperial state of New York, has become a legal holiday. Most of the others hold some commemorative exercises. When the great financial market of the world opened in London this morning, it was with the knowledge that the United States of America, ihe great republic over the seas, would re- cord no stock transactions this day. The words "No market — Lincoln's birthday" travel on ocean cables under every sea, and business in the great buildings, 40 stories high, of New York city, has paused today. So it does at Ft. Dear- born— you remember — on Lake Mich- igan, now one of the foremost cities of the world.

Nancy Hanks — Pray tell me more of the miracle of my little boy's life. I cannot wait to hear what it all means!

Lincoln's Mother

How American .Historians Regard Nancy Hanks

DUNHAM WRIGHT is the son of Abraham Lincoln's cousin, Celia Hanks Wright — Celia Hanks before her marriage to Mr. John D. Wright. Celia Hanks (Wright) was the niece of Nancy Hanks (Lincoln), Abraham Lincoln's mother.

According to the "Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln," by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, Nancy Hanks, born February 5, 1784, was left an orphan at her parents' death in 1793. She married on the 12th of June, 1804, Thomas Lincoln; and her uncle, Richard Berry, became surety on the marriage bond. She became the mother of Sarah Lincoln in 1807, of Abra- ham Lincoln in 1809, and of Thomas Lincoln, a younger child, who died in babyhood. He was buried in the old cemetery near the Cave Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln was born.

Dr. Christopher Graham, who attended the wed- ding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, says, ac- cording to Miss Tarbell's history:

"I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian— and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bear-meat, venison, wild turkey, and ducks' eggs, wild and tame, so com- mon that you could buy them at two bits a bushel; maple sugar, swung on a string to bite off for coffee or whisky; syrup in big gourds; peach and honey; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in."

"Nancy Hanks," says Dr. Robert H. Browne, "was a healthy, pleasant-appearing, confiding, shapely fashioned, if not a handsome woman. She had more than an ordinary education and knowledge of affairs for her time."

"The home into which the child [Abraham Lincoln] was born," says Miss Tarbell, "was the ordinary one of the poorer W. stern pioneer, a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single win- dow, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which is so familiar, has been over- drawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better

authority on the life of that day, »and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that "it is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in the winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home-woven 'Kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife."

This farm where Abraham Lincoln was born was on some of the poorest farm-land in the section, ac- cording to Mr. J. Roger Gore's record of the memories of Austin Gollaher, a childhood friend of Abraham Lincoln's in the region of his birth. But Thomas Lincoln had been attracted to the place by its most striking possession — a spring in a cave, from which flowed a pure cold water. However, when Abraham Lincoln was four years old the family moved away from the Cave Spring Farm, near which the baby who had died was buried, to a farm on Knob Creek, about fifteen miles away.

When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, his father again moved the family northwestward to Indiana. Austin Gollaher tells us that a few days before they left their Kentucky home at Knob Creek, he and his mother, Mrs. Gollaher, and Abraham Lincoln, then a little boy, and his sister Sarah, of nine years, went with Mrs. Lincoln to say good-by to the grave of her baby, near the Cave Spring Farm.

"We went in their old spring-wagon, pulled by Mr. Keith's mule and one of my father's. Mrs. Lincoln covered the grave with wild flowers and vines we had gathered along the way. Then we all kneeled down there on the hillside, and my mother prayed while Mrs. Lincoln said good-by to the little mound under the sheltering trees. On the way back, we stopped at the old Cave Spring to get a drink of that good water; and we climbed the hill to the cabin in which Abe was born, that his mother might look on it once again before she left."

It was the last time that Nancy Hanks Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln ever saw place where the boy was born.

"God bless my mother. All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."

HI ID

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